


As Long as He Needs Me

by amomentsilence



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Angst, Catatonia, Flashbacks, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pilot Husbands, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, RAF - Freeform, Sad Ending, Sort of non-linear i guess, Spitfire Pilots in Love, Thanks Christopher Nolan, WWII, World War II, i taught myself how to fly a spitfire for this, pleAse validate me, this is two years in the making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 03:17:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17675426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amomentsilence/pseuds/amomentsilence
Summary: The war has been over for six months when Collins finds out that Farrier is alive.A prisoner of a German POW camp, Farrier has been traumatised into a catatonic state, able to only say four words. The words that he recited to keep himself from losing his mind as a prisoner; "Fortis", "Fifty", "Two-thirty", and "Collins".Collins is determined to get him back, come Hell or high water.





	1. 1944

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> collins and farrier's names are borrowed from 'set ablaze', by vondrostes on ao3. that fic was the first dunkirk fic i read, and collins and farrier will always be asher and jack to me thanks to that. naming them anything else in this just felt wrong. enjoy! <3

**June 4, 1944**

It was the height of summer, but the cold outside the base was biting. Collins didn’t mind – he’d lived through worse than a mild chill, and the cold just meant there were less men outside to interrupt his smoke. He took another long drag from the cigarette in his hand and watched the smoke curl into the air, listening to the general sounds from the airstrip.

“Not joining in the celebrations, then?”

Francis Pritchard, his second in command, was stood beside him with his hands firmly at his sides, like Collins would snap on him if he didn’t stand perfectly straight. He knew it was because of what day it was, and he’d known from the moment he woke up and found the other Fortis members sharing a bottle of brandy in the rec hall. They’d all stared at him with the same anxious expression Pritchard was wearing now.

“Nothin’ to celebrate,” Collins watched as Pritchard took a cigarette from the pocket of his trousers and patted his other pockets in search of a lighter.

Collins held his out between them, and Pritchard took it gratefully. He lit his cigarette, and then warmed up both of his hands with the flame. If it had been anyone else, on any other day, he would have barked at them for using up the fuel, but he couldn’t find it in himself. Not today.

Smoke billowed from Pritchard’s mouth as he spoke, “Sure there is. It’s either that or mourn.”

“I’m not mournin’ either,” Collins snatched his lighter back and shoved it into his pocket. “I’ve got a job to do.”

In truth, he didn’t think about it because he didn’t _want_ to think about it – he was remarkably good at blissful ignorance. From the moment he’d been pulled from his sinking plane, he’d had a strong hold on his mind and his memories. He found that keeping himself distracted was the best way to do it; looking for a pulse in that boy on the boat, writing letters, doing his job as Fortis Leader and pretending that it didn’t feel wrong to be in the place Farrier would be if he were still around.

 

At one point in time, Asher Collins had thought that being a pilot was what he had been born to do. Enlisting for the RAF had been easy, following his father’s heroic plight with the RFC in the first war, and the first few months he had allowed his childish excitement to get in the way of his perception of what being at war meant. Now, twenty-seven years old and five long years into the war, he understood all too well that the horrors of war far outweighed the possibility of being hailed a hero should he return home.

There were six members of Fortis in total, and each was in his own plane, situated equal spaces apart on the runway of the base. Pritchard gave him a wave from his cockpit, and Collins nodded in return. He didn’t know exactly when he’d made the transition from the cocky young pilot who’d defied everyone’s best expectations to the esteemed officer who the younger lads looked up to, but he wasn’t sure that he liked the change.

He adjusted the throttle until it was open to five percent, watching the needle of the temperature gauge tick slowly upwards, to allow the engine time to idle and warm up. It was a tip that had been given to him by Farrier, after he’d dropped behind the rest of the squad during his first month because his engine wasn’t running evenly. “Your training officer will have told you that the Merlin overheats easily,” Farrier had told him. “That’s bullshit in this model, give her time to get ready.”

He checked the latch of the cockpit door to ensure that it was locked into the mandatory, half-open position. It was a small detail that he’d often skipped over in his early days, but he hadn’t forgotten it since Dunkirk, and he doubted he ever would again. If he saw out the tail end of the war, he was sure he would be double-checking his doors in a decade out of sheer instinct.  

Checking the door one more time, he indicated _chocks away_ to the ground crew around his Spitfire. Once the crew had shifted the chocks holding the wheels of the machine in place, he delighted silently in the change in the tone of the engine’s pure as he released the brake lever and the Spitfire shifted forward with a gentle nudge of the throttle. The temperature gauge was close to hitting one hundred degrees.

“Fortis Leader, this is Control, do you copy?” came a crackling British voice through his headset. Collins hooked his mask over his face. In his head, he flicked through the final stationary checks.

“Aye, this is Fortis Leader, I copy,” he replied. Control would continue to check in with the other five pilots until everyone was accounted for, before connecting their lines to allow them to communicate with each other. “Are we ready for take-off?”

“Affirmative, Fortis Leader.”

Gently nudging at the throttle again, the Spitfire picked up speed, and, at the same time, he pushed the control column forward. All of this was done with a similar care – he imagined – to careful embroidery, as pushing the control column a fraction too far would drive the nose of the plane down onto the Tarmac. He’d experienced a pilot do that once or twice, including one incident where it had launched the rear end of the plane over the front, not only destroying the plane, but killing the man inside it.

As soon as he felt the tail of the Spitfire lift slightly off the ground, he nudged the control column back a touch. The jolt of the back wheel lifting had terrified him during his first few months of flying, but it comforted him now, as it meant he’d picked up enough speed to ease the throttle forward to the gate. Hand firmly grasping the control column to keep it steady, his stomach dropped as the plane lifted.

Once at a comfortable height and speed, he moved his right hand from the control column to the undercarriage control, which brought both of the wheels up, confirmed by the blinking light of the cockpit indicator switching from green to red.  

In his early days, he would have only been half-concentrating on the controls, the other half of his conscience would be focussing on the ground beneath him, and the space between the tarmac and the base of his plane growing larger by the second, awe-inspired by his ability to fly, as if it somehow set him apart from his fellow men. Now, his eyes were set forward, only sparingly glancing around him once he’d made his ascent, to briefly count the other Spitfires.

“Fortis One-through-Five, this is Fortis Leader, do you copy? Over.” While in the sky, he made a conscious effort to speak clearer and slower. Anglicising his own voice wasn’t something his Scottish soul was particularly happy about, but the others had no hope of understanding his orders otherwise.

Each one of the other five pilots replied in due course, and Collins became a silent listener in the playful conversation between the others. Never in his time in the RAF, not even when Farrier was about, had the Fortis team spoken so much while in the sky.

The fight came to them. One moment, they were joking with each other and discussing who was buying the beers once this was done, and the next, bullets were reverberating off of the glass above Collins’ head. At this point unaffected by the threat of barely-missed shots, Collins dropped a hundred or so feet and watched the Luftwaffe plane soar overhead.

There were at least six more German planes on them, which was no surprise. All throughout the war, the RAF had suffered from severe understaffing, and he’d been involved in flights that were two of their men to eight Germans. At least, here, they weren’t too ridiculously outnumbered.

Collins managed to take down two of the enemy planes with continued shots to their respective Starboard wings. His private victory gave him a moment of self-centred pride before a voice was blaring into his ear.

“Fortis Leader, I’ve got two tailing me, over,” Edison Hankel, Fortis Three, said. He sounded panicked but was doing an excellent job of keeping his composure.

Pritchard’s voice crackled through not a moment later, “I’m right behind you, Fortis Three.”

Inching his hand away from the gun firing switch, Collins banked around to observe the fight. Hankel was expertly avoiding the enemy’s fire, and he could see Pritchard, Fortis One, closing in on them. “You’re right, Fortis One, you’ve got this one. Over.”

The nose of Pritchard’s Spitfire dipped toward the German planes, “I’m on him.”

Collins faltered, throat becoming suddenly and unexplainably dry.

He was out of it for a moment, maybe thirty seconds at most, but when he came back to himself, he had dropped almost three-hundred feet, a straight nosedive toward the blue expanse of the English channel, and the sheer panic of facing that endless wall of ocean instinctively forced him to rear the plane upwards.

“I repeat, Fortis Leader, are you down?” was what he heard when his ears finally stopped ringing.

His harness was crushing his ribcage into his lungs, restricting his breathing even with the oxygen steadily supplied to him through his mask.

“No, not down.” The neckline of his insulating shirt was constricting around his throat and killing him slowly, he was sure of it. “Wing Commander – I’m unable to continue safely. Fortis One will be taking over as Fortis Leader, do you copy? Over.”

“Copied. Fortis one, do you copy? Over.”

“Copied, Wing Commander. Take care, Fortis Leader. Over.”

He clawed at his mask until it came loose, and took a deep, stuttered gulp for air.

 

The Bakelite disc felt almost soft on Collins’ calloused fingertips. He could feel the textured surface where it had been stamped, and the other which was smooth. On the smooth side, if he squeezed it hard enough, he could almost convince himself that he could feel the remnants of Farrier’s body heat from years prior, when it had hung on the chain around his neck. Slipping his fire-resistant identity disc into Collins’ pocket as they left for Dunkirk had probably seemed a brilliant idea at the time, but Farrier had paid the price now. The brass water-resistant tag stood no chance in the face of a fire like the one that had destroyed his Spitfire.

Collins felt a sob rack his body. This wasn’t the first time he had cried since Dunkirk, but it was rare that he would allow himself the luxury of crying. The war left no time for mourning.

Once his tear ducts had been bled dry, he blinked through his sodden eyelashes at the tag, at the letters stamped into the material until his eyes misted over again. It didn’t even matter, he’d practically memorised them. **RAF. F/O. JF. CE. 32557038.**

There was a knock on the door. Collins hurriedly shoved the disc into his pocket and pressed his sleeves against his eyes for a few seconds before calling the person in.

“Is this a good time?” Pritchard stepped hesitantly into the room.

“Perfect,” Collins said. “What is it?”

Pritchard shifted his weight a little, as if he couldn’t stand completely still. Collins wondered if it was because of his age or because Collins made him uncomfortable. A twisted part of him hoped it was the latter.

“I – uh – I wanted to thank you for the opportunity today, to take over, I mean,” he said, and it took a moment for it to click. “You’re a good leader, I know you’d never actually just lose it like that. But... thank you. You’ve probably noticed, but I’ve been trying to prove myself since you left us all on the ground at Dunkirk. You’re a hero, we’re all just trying to catch up.”

 

With nothing to do by way of his job due to an intense and unexpected downpour, Collins spent the next few days brooding. He didn’t cry again, he didn’t look at or touch the disc again, but he busied himself with drafting letters and sleeping and occasionally sketching, if he ran out of things to write.

It was late in the evening of one of these days when there was a knock at his door, he called the person in without turning around.

He recognised the voice as one of their younger sergeants, Kenneth Davies. “Lieutenant, there’s a telephone call for you.”

Some rogue part of Collins’ brain immediately strived to convince him that it was from Farrier, as it always did. It spun its web of memories and mirages of reunions and a world where he didn’t crash into the English Channel, where the rescue team didn’t find the burnt-out corpse of Farrier’s Spitfire and pronounce him MIA. The lack of a body (and an identity disc, because it was in Collins’ pocket, which he didn’t realise until after he’d boarded the train) had meant one of two things: Farrier was dead, and his body had been incinerated in the fire, or, that Farrier was alive and trapped in a German POW camp.

Even with the second option, he was as good as dead and in no fit state to be calling anyone.

“Who is it?” Collins crushed his cigarette in the ashtray at his side. Smoking indoors wasn’t a habit he’d like to keep up, but the rain made it virtually impossible to do it outside – he’d seen others try – and he didn’t fancy using up his supply of fags.

“He said his name was Peter Dawson, Sir.”

That was all he needed. “Thank you, Officer. Close the door on your way out.”

It took Collins a moment to stand up and cross the room, to where Davies had left the door slightly ajar – there were no such thing as closed doors in the base, Collins was grateful that he’d known what he had meant – and stepped out into the corridor. On his way to the phone, he had to pass through the rec room, in which the squad had seemingly taken up a game of poker.

“Fancy a game, Lieutenant?” One of the newer boys – William Hunter – asked.

He hated his title. Having it used in place of his name only served as a reminder that almost everyone he had started this war with was gone. The only pilot who had been there as long as him was an older officer named Michael Alves, and he now only haunted the halls of Sculthorpe, in a constant daze that no one could snap him out of. It was only a matter of time until he got himself shot out of the sky, and Collins doubted that he’d even care. That was if he didn’t get put in one of those homes for shell-shock before that could happen.

“Maybe later, lads,” he replied. “Just passing through.”

The phone was in a corridor that led on from the rec room, and Collins shut the door behind him before picking up the receiver.

_Collins had tried to leave for the trains with the other men, but he didn’t get very far before he turned back. Something felt wrong about leaving without as much as a goodbye to the family on the boat. He helped Peter, the boy, carry his friend’s body from below deck and place him on the dock, and shook his father’s hand. Feeling like he’d done some good, he turned and finally headed in the direction of the trains, thinking about how he would describe the experience on the boat to Farrier, when they reunited in Sculthorpe._

_There was a sudden yell from behind him, and he turned just as Peter came bounding after him, pushing past the few soldiers still clambering off the civilian boats._

_“Wait! Just – just one moment.” Peter procured an envelope and a pen from his back pocket, using his hand as a table to scribble on the envelope. “My address, just in case.”_

_“In case?”_

_A bemused smile pulled at the corner of Peter’s lip. He pressed the envelope to Collins’ chest. “In case you need rescuing again.”_

_Collins clapped him on the shoulder and tucked the paper into his own breast pocket, “You’re funny, lad.”_

_Peter’s nose wrinkled, “I’m not much younger than you.”_

_Collins glanced at Mr Dawson, stood on his boat, and followed his eyeline to the boy’s body on the dock, “No... I guess not.”_

_Without warning, Peter pulled him into a hug, lithe fingers clutching at the back of his uniform. Collins wasn’t a hugger, not really, but the way Peter exhaled when he reciprocated and wrapped his arms around his shoulders showed him how much he needed it – the touch, the feeling of being held. He understood, and he didn’t let go, not until he’d felt the teenager’s shoulders relax._

_“Keep yourself out of trouble,” he muttered into the boy’s hair, and patted the back of his head before releasing him._

_The pilot straightened his back, lifted his hand to his brow and kicked his boots together. Peter mirrored the action, eyes misty and jaw tense. When Collins looked to Mr Dawson on the boat, he was doing the same._

_Collins departed with one final nod and followed the rest of the rescued men to the trains._

“Have you heard?” Peter said in lieu of a hello.

His excitement for the news – whatever it was – was nothing new. If it was war related, which it seemed to always be, Peter would be one of the first to know about it. Collins was aware that he was pretty eager to enlist, but he felt a brotherly sort of protection over the boy which made him repeatedly advise him against it.

“Heard what?”

Peter’s reply was instantaneous, “About the prisoner of war camps, the Free French have liberated another 7000 soldiers! And they’ve got sights on so many more...”

“Peter,” Collins warned.

“Asher,” Peter countered. At the use of his Christian name, Collins stopped talking immediately. “You know what I’m trying to say. He could be alive.”

“How do you know all this? Surely they’re not printing it in The Mirror.”

“Dad gets information over the wireless,” Peter said. “Aren’t you at least a little hopeful?”

He huffed out a laugh, “This is why you wouldn’t last a second at war, Pete, you’re far too optimistic.”

“I lasted at Dunkirk. And I’m not optimistic, I almost made Dad turn the boat around because I didn’t see your ‘chute. I know how it works.” Collins stopped himself from laughing at just how untrue that was. But, really, he didn’t _want_ Peter to know how it worked, that naïve optimism was probably the only thing that stopped him from going crazy over what he’d seen. “Please just have a little bit of hope? It’s not a bad thing.”

“Go to bed, Peter,” Collins avoided the question.

He could practically hear Peter’s disgruntled expression. “I’m twenty-one, I can stay up past nine o’clock.”

“Go to _bed_ , and tell your pa I’ll visit soon, alright?”

“Fine,” Peter huffed, and then the line died.

He placed the phone back on the receiver and headed back out into the rec room, where the poker game was in full swing. Collins pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and headed to them.

“Alright if I join?”

There was a loud cheer from the others as he took a place in between Hunter and Davies and drew his cards.

“Talkin’ to your bird, Collins?” one of them asked.

“Jus’ a lad I met on Dynamo,” Collins said, the game continuing smoothly. “His pa needed some help.”

The game finished in the early hours of the morning – Collins wiped the floor with all of them and left with five more packs of fags than he’d had when he started – and he headed back to his room. Once changed, he pulled the ID disc out of the pocket of his uniform and sat down on his cot. He toyed the disc in his hands, weaving it through his fingers and pressing on it with the pad of his thumb, and he let his eyes shut as he pressed his hands together, feeling it, warm, between his cold palms.

For the first time in years, he prayed.


	2. 1945

**May 11, 1945.**

The war was over.

Collins celebrated VE day with his men and resigned from the RAF at the earliest convenience. He was assured that his discharge would be treated as honourable, on account of some petty injury, but he didn’t care how he was discharged; he’d served his time and he knew what he’d done for the war effort. All he wanted now was out.

On the train, he searched for an empty compartment, and the closest he found already housed an elderly woman, asleep sat up. He hoped that she wouldn’t mind his company as he took the seat opposite her, stashing his bag beneath the bench.

The sun was just rising outside the train window, and he was exhausted to his bones. He removed his jacket, planning on folding it into a makeshift pillow, but he first reached into the breast pocket, where he’d stashed Farrier’s ID disc.

He slipped the rusting chain from around his own neck, clumsy fingers fiddling with the untouched latch until it gave and opened, so that he could threat the thin chain through the hole in Farrier’s ID disc. He fastened the latch again and looped it over his head. The tag looked perfectly at home alongside his own.

When he looked up, the woman was awake and watching him with steady green eyes. Her voice was hoarse, “Where did you serve?”

“RAF. Squadron 105.”

Her gaze drifted to the tags, resting in his palms, “Did you lose someone?”

He nodded, silently, unsure of how to reply.

She smiled sadly, “We lost my grandson in 1940, a battle in France.”

That was all she said, and it was all Collins needed – to know that his pain was shared by so many others.

 

It took him eight hours to get to Dorset, and a further twenty minutes to walk to the Dawson home. He was worried that he would be greeted with hostility by the Dawsons, that they would be uninterested in seeing him. As soon as the door opened, and Peter practically threw himself into his arms, he was proven wrong.

“You’re here,” Peter breathed against his shoulder.

“I’m here.” He pulled back from the embrace and ruffled Peter’s hair like he was a child and not twenty-one years old. “Where’s that pa of yours?”

Peter turned and headed into the house, Collins toed off his shoes at the threshold before following Peter through into the living room.

“Asher,” Mrs Dawson cradled Collins’ face with her hands. It was as if she, too, didn’t believe that he was actually there. He had only met her a handful of times, during his rare weeks of leave, but she was as loving to him as his own mother would be.

“Irene,” Collins greeted her with a smile. She looked much too young to be coming on fifty, hardly greying compared to her husband.

Mr Dawson greeted him with a respectful, “Sir.” and a handshake. Collins mirrored this greeting, and he was guided through to the kitchen.

 

“Will you be staying for long?” Irene asked later, while they were setting up for dinner. Peter had disappeared with his father at some point during the afternoon, so Collins had offered to help her set the table.

He folded the first napkin and placed it down, “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually.” He stood back from the table and wrung out his hands. “You see, the war’s left me with nothing much...”

She looked up from the oven, shocked and sympathetic, he diverted his gaze to the floor. “I had my parents, but they died when my brother and I were teenagers. He moved to Edinburgh and left me to fend for my own in Glasgow.

“It wouldn’t be forever, but I was hoping that I could do some work for you in exchange of a place to stay for a few months.”

She rushed over to him, lifting his dropped chin with her petite hand.  “Son, you know that you will _always_ have a place in my home.”

When he stepped into the spare bedroom, he wondered if he’d opened the wrong door and walked into Peter’s bedroom instead. It was frozen in time. The bed had been stripped, but that was the only bare thing about the room. There was a wardrobe to his right, slightly open and bursting full of clothes.

A pair of leather boots sat underneath the desk opposite the bed, which had a typewriter and an empty teacup sat on top of it. By the looks of it, somebody could have been sat at that desk, writing and drinking tea, just that morning. They could have put on their heavy boots and wool jumper from the wardrobe and gone out, ready to come back to find a homeless ex-pilot asleep in their bed.

There was a frame propped beside the typewriter, displaying a photograph of a young blonde boy on the shoulders of an older boy with darker hair. Both of them had face-splitting smiles, and a woman who he recognised as Irene, though much younger, was reaching out to the younger boy with a terrified expression.

_Happy birthday Jonathan, thank you for always carrying me on your shoulders even when mum told you not to._

_Love, Peter._

When he turned the frame back over to look at the photograph, it could not have been more obviously Peter, even in black and white the light hair and freckles were difficult to mistake. Collins wondered who _Jonathan_ was.

“This was my brother’s room.”

Seeing Peter in the doorway, Collins guiltily placed the photo frame back, but Peter reached around him to pick it up. He smiled at the photograph.

“Mum used to hate it when he picked me up like that,” he reminisced. “She used to scream bloody murder at us whenever he’d do it. The only time he ever dropped me was when she startled him, though.”

“I’m sorry,” Collins knew it wouldn’t help. He said it anyway.

Peter shrugged, “He’d be around your age, now. I think that’s why my parents took so well to you; you remind them of him.”

Collins couldn’t read the look on Peter’s face, but he didn’t think he needed to.

“I’ll never replace him, and I’m not trying to.”

“I know,” Peter’s sad smile quickly became devious. “You couldn’t lift me on your shoulders anyway, _old man_.”

Collins crossed his arms, “You did _not_ just say that to me, lad.”

“What if I did?”

“Then you’d better start running.”

Peter immediately turned and bolted down the corridor, Collins in close pursuit. The bannister creaked and groaned as first Peter, and then Collins grabbed it to spin themselves around it and race down the stairs. He heard the Dawsons chuckle as they sprinted past them in the living room, and Peter wrenched open the back door to the garden.

“You’re getting slow in your old age!” Peter taunted.

“Oh, really?” Collins surged forward to grab Peter by the knees and sling him over his shoulder. Peter’s slim physique – really too slim for a man his age – helped him a lot, but he’d never admit that.

Peter kicked his stomach and whacked at his back with his fists, “Put me _down_!”

Collins gave in once the kicks started to hurt and dropped Peter onto the grass. Unprepared, Peter stumbled back a few steps and fell with a gasp onto his arse. The surprised look on his face got Collins laughing, which made Peter laugh, too.

It was the first time Collins had properly laughed in a long time, and it carried on until he was keeled over, and his stomach hurt. He felt absolutely ridiculous, but also didn’t care as he dropped down on the grass next to Peter.

There were a few moments of silence as both of them wiped the tears from their eyes and tried to stop giggling.

“What’s this?”

Peter held up the item to the light, and Collins’ laughter quickly subsided, the pain in his stomach just becoming a queasiness as the tags and chain glinted in the dim light. He grabbed the chain from Peter, checked that all three of the tags were still there and secured it around his neck.

“We should go back inside,” he pushed himself to his feet.

Peter caught his arm, “Wait!” He turned around, “Were those your dog tags?”

“We didn’t really call them that in the RAF, but...” Collins nodded once, really hoping that Peter wouldn’t ask too many questions.

Trusting that Collins wouldn’t try to go back inside again, Peter let go of his wrist to reach into his own shirt and pull out the chain that he wore around his neck, with two identity tags dangling from it.

“These were my brother’s. He was meant to be buried with them, but dad insisted that he would have wanted me to have them instead.” Collins knew the question that would inevitably come next. “Why do you have three?”

Collins ground his teeth, “One of them is - _was_ Farrier’s.”

“How did you get it? I thought he...”

“He gave it to me, before we left for Dunkirk,” Collins interrupted. “Slipped it in my pocket, I didn’t realise I had it until after I’d got on the train to go back. Do you know why there are two?”

“One of them is water resistant, and the other is fire resistant.”

Collins was constantly impressed by how much he knew.

“This tag I have, it’s the fire resistant one.” Collins rested his hand on his chest, just over where the tags were. “He thought he wouldn’t need it.”

He saw Peter swallow, bow his head and shut his eyes as if it pained him to hear, “But he did.”

“They sent a rescue team back to the beach, after everyone had been evacuated, and they found his Spitfire, completely burnt out. A fire like that would have destroyed everything, including the tag and his body.”

Peter glanced up, “So is he...?”

The question hung unsaid in the air.

“I don’t know,” Collins said. “And I doubt I ever will. _That’s_ why I don’t hope. It’s because I can’t, because if I do and if he never comes back... it’s my fault. Because _I_ had his tag and _I’m_ the reason we’ll never know.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, because what else was he supposed to say to something like that?

Collins clapped Peter’s shoulder. “Goodnight, Peter.”

He smiled and headed back into the house, leaving Peter in the dying light of the garden.

 

Screaming echoed around the small house, and Collins was almost immediately awake. Logically, he knew that he wasn’t at the base anymore, but the screaming brought out a primal instinct in him that had been drilled in since training – somebody was hurt, somebody was dying, somebody was getting killed. In a moment, he had hurtled out of bed and thrown open the bedroom door to find Mr and Mrs Dawson out of bed, too. Irene shared a quick look with him before rushing into Peter’s room, and Mr Dawson stayed at the door.

They watched in tense silence as she sat down at the edge of Peter’s bed, as the boy thrashed and shouted unintelligibly. Collins was almost sure he would have to intervene at some point, when it seemed that he could have struck her in his sleep. She placed her hand on his bright red cheek and slowly stroked her thumb over his cheekbone, hushing him and whispering to him softly.

At first it didn’t seem like it would work, but eventually the thrashing subsided, and his breathing slowed, until he was just shaking his head and muttering, “George... George, he’s – he’s dead... George is dead... help, please...”

Eventually, his eyes blinked open and the mumbling stopped completely. “Mum?” he whispered. He looked about ten years old.

“I’m here, darling,” she soothed. “It was just a dream. Shh, go back to sleep.”

She stroked her thumb over his cheek and began to sing, and Collins had to turn away to stop the burning behind his eyes becoming tears. He couldn’t handle seeing Peter like this, especially when he knew how embarrassed he would be if he knew he had seen.

It didn’t take very long for Peter to fall back to sleep, and after a few moments, Irene came back out of the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her.

“I’m sorry if he woke you up, that’s been happening more and more recently.” She was almost curling into her nightgown.

“I wasn’t sleeping all too well anyway,” Collins said. “Bed’s far too comfortable.”

Her hand brushed his arm comfortingly. “He’s... the nightmares haven’t been too bad recently, but with the anniversary coming up...”

“I know,” Collins placed his hand atop hers. “It’s going to be hard on all of us. Let’s just hope we can get him through it, aye?”

Her eyes sparkled, “You’re a good man, Mr Collins.”

“I’d like to think so.”

Collins ignored how heavy the lie felt on his tongue.

The Dawsons went back to bed, and Collins went into his room but didn’t sleep. He sat on the corner of his bed and pressed the tag against his lips again, praying that he would somehow know how to get Peter through this without losing his own mind.

He headed down into the kitchen the next morning and it was as if the night before hadn’t even happened. Peter was sat at the table, reading a book and spooning porridge into his mouth. Irene was still hovering at the stove.

“Good morning, love. Porridge?” she said the moment he walked in.

“Yes, thank you.”

He sat in the chair opposite Peter, who was so engrossed in his book he didn’t so much as look up at him.

There was soon a bowl of hot porridge in front of him, and he took note of how much better Irene looked compared to the night before as she sat down at the head of the table. Collins didn’t miss the concerned glances she spared towards her son every so often, though, and how she would run her hands through her brunette hair every time he flipped a page, as if what he read on the next would cause him to panic.

“I’m going to visit George today,” Peter flipped the page. “You should come, he’d like to see you.”

Collins didn’t even realise Peter had been speaking to him until the silence stretched on so long that he looked up at him expectantly.

Collins hummed around his spoon, he had been thinking about paying his respects to Peter’s friend. “If I’m not needed around here.”

“Finley’s at the dock already,” Irene said. “He doesn’t want you to start working yet anyway, wants you to settle first.”

After breakfast, Collins dug his dress uniform out of his bag, where it had been shoved far to the bottom. He’d been very adamant on avoiding reminders of his time in the war after the fact, but something in him told him that wearing the uniform – or, at least, the jacket and hat – was the right thing to do. George deserved that, at least.

He headed back downstairs, feeling utterly uncomfortable, and a clattering sound came from the kitchen. When he turned, he found Irene in the doorway, a teapot lying at her feet.

“Are you alright?” he stepped forward.

She nodded frantically and bent to pick up the teapot, “Quite. You just... That uniform.”

He glanced down at it, and then his eye caught the photo that was displayed proudly in the centre of the mantlepiece – Peter’s brother in _his_ dress uniform – and he felt horrible for not realising it before. “Aye, uh, I thought it was only right. The boy was a hero, after all.”

“Yes, he was,” her voice was strained. “Peter is waiting for you outside.”

 

Collins found Peter in the front garden, on his hands and knees in the dirt of his mother’s flowerbed with a pile of flowers beside him. Collins coughed to make himself known, and Peter looked up from the flowers.

“You’re ready?” he asked, and Collins hummed. “Right, just give me a moment...”

He plucked a few more of the flowers from the root and tied them all together with a piece of ribbon that he’d been keeping around his neck.

“George loved the geraniums, he used to talk to my mum about them all the time. Him and his mum didn’t have a garden, so he liked to spend time in ours. One year, for his birthday, I painted him wearing a daisy chain on his head, surrounded by flowers.”

There was a strange, distant sadness on Peter’s face as he stood up and brushed the soil from the knees of his trousers. But then, he looked up at Collins and his face was happy again, “Come on, we’ll use dad’s car.”

“You can drive?” Collins followed Peter to the garage.

“I’m twenty-one,” Peter reminded him as they clambered into the car.

The cemetery was small, a church garden not more than a few metres each way. It was surprisingly beautiful, peaceful, with willow trees and a path that led right through the centre.

There was a woman knelt at one of the graves, and Peter tapped her on the shoulder wordlessly. Collins took off his hat while they embraced.

“This is Anne, George’s mum,” Peter introduced them once they’d stopped hugging. “Anne, this is Asher Collins, he’s staying with me and my parents for a while. He was in the sky at Dunkirk.”

Anne was young, younger than Irene, but her red-rimmed eyes were much too old for her, as if she had been through far too much. Collins recognised that look, he knew it all too well.

“It’s nice to meet you, Asher,” her voice was so soft it could have been mistaken for the whistling of the wind.

Both Anne and Collins stayed stood as Peter crouched next to the gravestone. He placed the flowers down, speaking in a hushed voice to George, updating him on what had been happening since he’d last visited. It seemed like a routine for him, and Collins couldn’t help but think about how familiar the sight of a cemetery must have been for Peter, who really was too young to know it so intimately.

He looked to Anne, and she had covered her mouth with one gloved hand, her eyes brimming with tears. She bared a remarkable likeness to her son, even though Collins had only known him briefly.

Peter was sat cross-legged on the ground next to the tombstone now, talking animatedly. It was as if George was right there across from him, talking back. Of course, Collins knew he wasn’t, and he couldn’t give himself the satisfaction of pretending that he was, pretending that there was any hope at all that Peter would get his best friend back. He’d seen too much death and destruction to allow himself the luxury of dreaming like that.

“Your son is a hero,” he eventually said, just to break the silence that was weighing down on him.

Anne smiled sadly, a glimmer of something that Collins couldn’t place in her eyes, “I always knew he would be.”

Collins shifted, swallowing, “I hope I’m not out of line, but… how are you not angry? At Mr Dawson, I mean, for letting him go out to Dunkirk.”

“Peter was the best thing that ever happened to my son. To take him away from him, even after...” she stopped, she couldn’t bear to say it. “It would be a great disservice. Besides, the only people we have to blame are the ones who caused the disaster on that beach. Anger towards anyone else would be simply wasted.”

Her voice shook at the end of her sentence, and she burrowed her petite face into her scarf. He considered her with a sidelong glance, clutched the ID discs near his heart and let his eyes drift back to Peter.

That night, Collins moved his sheets and cushions to the floor and slept there. It was the best night of sleep he’d had in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please excuse the length of these first few chapters, they are ridiculously short compared to the later ones


	3. 1946

**December 25 th, 1945**

Christmas Day of 1945 came and went.

Collins had been living with the Dawsons for over six months and had been half expecting for them to have asked him to leave by now. They hadn’t, though, and he was working for Mr Dawson full time, mainly doing odd jobs that Finley was starting to find too difficult now that he was growing older.

On Christmas morning, Collins was called downstairs by Peter, who – despite being almost twenty-two – still had the same boyish excitement that Collins used to feel on Christmas Day. They shared gifts between them, and Collins, who hadn’t been expecting any gifts at all, received a pair of pyjamas from Irene, a bottle of brandy from Finley, and a canvas painting of a spitfire flying over Dorset from Peter. He’d known that the boy was an avid artist, having found a number of his sketches lying around the house, but this was in full, acrylic colour and was far more detailed than anything he’d ever seen Peter paint before.

Tension build at the back of his throat, and he swallowed to stop himself from crying as he ruffled Peter’s hair and thanked him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d received a gift so thoughtful.

He skipped out on mass, with the excuse of helping the neighbours shovel the snow from their driveways. Once the family had left for church, he disappeared to his room with the bottle of brandy Finley had gifted him and poured two glasses. He set one of them down on the desk, sat down on his bed and raised his glass.

_Collins hadn’t celebrated a Christmas since he was seventeen, when his mother had died following a short and horrific fight with tuberculosis. Immediately after her death, his brother moved across the country to escape the painful reminders that lurked around every corner, and Collins was left to fend for himself. There was never time to celebrate._

_Now an officer with the RAF, he at least had somebody to spend the day with. The boys tried to make the day as special as possible, eating a ration-permitting dinner from the mess hall and sharing “presents”, which mostly consisted of cigarette packets tied in borrowed brown paper with string, and planned to proceed get drunk on gifted whiskey._

_Collins had ducked out of the celebrations just before the drinking had started. Farrier hadn’t shown up for the dinner or the gifts, and he found him in his room – one of the perks of being in the RAF compared to the army was that every pilot got his own room rather than just a bunk. Not that the cramped rooms were anything particularly special._

_He took a seat next to Farrier on his bed._

_“I’m Jewish,” Farrier answered a question that he hadn’t asked. “That’s why I’m not celebrating.”_

_Collins nodded thoughtfully, “I never knew you were a Jew, you don’t...”_

_“If you say I don’t act like one, I can’t be held responsible for where this fag ends up.” He lifted the fag in his hand just to prove a point, and Collins clamped his jaw shut. “I did get you something, though.”_

_At Collins’ shocked expression, Farrier chuckled, “Don’t look so surprised.”_

_He leant over Collins and took out a box from under his pillow. It was relatively small, but Collins recognised it almost immediately._

_“Romeo y Julieta?” Collins sounded almost outraged. He didn’t smoke cigars very much, only when he could get his hands on them. But Romeo y Julieta were an expensive brand, and if somebody had told him that he’d get a gift like that – from Farrier, no less – he would have told them to take a hike. “Fucking hell... Where did you get these?”_

_Farrier shrugged, as if it didn’t matter that he’d spent so much money on Collins. They’d gotten close with Farrier being Collins’ mentor, but he’d never exhibited any interest in being friends with Collins outside of their duty. “I thought you deserved Churchill’s favourite.”_

Before Collins knew it, 1946 had arrived, and he went right back to working. Most of the neighbours loved him for the work he did around the village, and he had fixed more roofs and received more cigars than he could smoke for his work. As much as Peter begged, he wouldn’t let him have one.

He sometimes visited George, and as much as he treasured the conversations he would have with Anne while there, he would normally stay at the house to allow Peter to have time alone with his friend.

The snow turned to sludge and then eventually melted away as Christmas passed, but it didn’t depart without leaving a gaping hole in the roof of the Dawsons’ shed. Although unasked, he decided to fix it on one of the drier January days, before the rain could come in and destroy the place.

Irene opened the back door of the house and peered out, calling up to him. “Asher, a man is here for you!”

“What’s his name?”

“Francis Pritchard,” she pulled her shawl tighter around her to protect her shoulders from the cold. “He said that you would know who he was.”

Collins hadn’t even known if Pritchard had survived the tail end of the war, which he’d felt incredibly guilty about for a long time. On his last day, when he’d told Pritchard that he’d be staying at the Dawson residence for the foreseeable and to contact him there if he ever needed anything, he hadn’t actually expected to be taken up on his offer. He’d only really told him in the rare event that he could pass on the information if Farrier ever returned.

Irene went back inside once the cold got too biting, and Collins packed the tools he’d been using back into their box and brought it down the ladder with him. He left both the box and his shoes on the doorstep before he walked through the house.

Pritchard looked like he’d aged more than eight months, sat on the Dawsons’ sofa, shifting his dress uniform hat between his hands. Before, during the war, he’d reminded Collins more of Peter with his youthfulness and passion for the good fight. Now, however, he reminded Collins more of himself, exhausted and void of the spark he had once had. The man jumped up when Collins entered the room, nearly dropping his hat to the floor.

“Pritchard,” Collins shook his hand. “What on Earth are you doing here?”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” It was like Pritchard knew that he should have been smiling but his mouth wouldn’t allow anything more than a twitch.

Collins was extremely glad that Irene chose that moment to bring in a tray of tea.

“I didn’t know what you liked, but I don’t think you can go wrong with an English breakfast,” she placed the tray down on the coffee table and poured out two cups. Collins couldn’t tear his eyes away from Pritchard, and how his hands shook when he picked up his cup. “Are you not going to introduce us, Asher?”

Collins forced himself to look away from the man, “Sorry, Irene. This is Francis Pritchard, he was my second in command in Fortis. Pritchard, this is Irene Dawson.”

Irene was visibly perturbed by his sudden hostility, “It’s lovely to meet you, Francis.” She patted Collins’ shoulder. “I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, Collins watching Pritchard closely. He was sipping his tea carefully, conscious not to spill any.

Collins waited until he placed his cup down to ask, tersely, “What did you come here for? Because we may not have seen each other for a while, but I know you didn’t pop by to catch up over a brew.”

Pritchard swallowed, and Collins really wished he’d just fucking get on with it.

“It’s... it’s Farrier. They found him.”

Collins’ heartbeat was in his ears, like a clock that had started ticking backwards. He clenched his fists so tight that he could feel his nails making marks in the skin of his palms. They couldn’t possibly have...

Farrier was dead, whether he died that day on the beach or was killed in the POW camps, it didn’t matter; he was dead, and he wasn’t coming back. Collins had just come to terms with that, he couldn’t have it torn away from him again.

“No, they didn’t,” he said through gritted teeth, trying to make himself believe it. Something, some small voice at the back of his mind was echoing, _yes, they did! He’s alive! You left him there!_

“They did,” Pritchard said, and it was clarification and it was Collins’ worst nightmare, and Collins _needed_ him to stop talking if he wanted to get out of this without being punched. “They infiltrated the POW camps last year...”

“Don’t,” Collins choked. “Please, don’t.”

Pritchard’s eyebrows drew together, “Collins.”

Collins just looked at him, silently pleading for him to stop, for him to do anything but finish this conversation with the inevitable. Pritchard carried on despite his obvious warning, “They said he was in pretty bad shape, but was one of the only ones to...”

He didn’t get to finish, because in one swift movement, Collins had swept Irene’s vase off the mantlepiece and hurled it across the room. It smashed on the wall just behind Pritchard’s head, shattered pieces hitting the ground and some landing on Pritchard’s shoes.

“Get out.” When Pritchard didn’t move immediately, Collins repeated himself louder, “Get _out_!”

He grabbed Pritchard by the shoulders of his uniform and wrestled him towards the door of the house, fabric slipping under his shaking fingers. Pritchard resisted, pushing against Collins’ chest with both hands, insisting that he could leave himself and didn’t have to be dragged. However, Collins wasn’t satisfied until Pritchard was outside and the door was slammed in his face.

He launched his fist into the wall of the narrow hallway and was almost disappointed when the only thing that broke was the picture frame hanging beside it, which fell to the floor with a crack. Pain shot up his arm, starting from his knuckles, and he revelled in the ache, clenching and unclenching his fist just to feel the pain flower through his hand with renewed fervour. He screwed his eyes shut tight, trying to stop hot, angry tears from flowing down his cheeks.

“Asher,” the softness in Irene’s voice replaced Collins’ anger with guilt and he now couldn’t stop himself from crying. “Whatever is the matter? Come on, sit down.”

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and led him into the living room. Once she had him sat on the sofa, she spared a long look at her shattered vase.

“I’ll replace it,” he said, and then, “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head and lifted his arm to inspect his knuckles, “What did you do?” she was speaking mostly to herself. “I’m going to go and fetch the first aid kit, and then you can tell me what happened while I clean you up. Alright?”

He nodded, because her kindness rendered him unable to say no to her, and she cradled his face softly before heading to the kitchen. When she was gone, the silence almost choked him. How could Farrier be alive? It just wasn’t possible, and if it was... he’d left him on Dunkirk beach. He’d left him to die.

 

After sobbed explanations and cups of tea endlessly supplied by Irene, they agreed that it would be best to replace the vase and the picture frame discreetly and not tell Peter and his father about the incident. Collins finished his work on the roof – and he would be lying if he said that what he’d done after Pritchard’s visit was the same quality as what he’d done prior – and then helped Irene finish and dish out dinner.

“We’re back!” Peter called through the house once he arrived home, and came into the kitchen taking a deep breath, “That smells lovely.” he kissed his mum on the cheek before taking his normal seat at the table.

Mr Dawson followed not long after, taking the same route as Peter, but he stopped to hand something to Collins.

“This was put through the letterbox,” he said. “It’s for you.”

It was a small note, just a piece of paper folded in half with his name written messily on the front. He unfolded it, and there was a simple message on the inside.

_Collins,_

_You’ll want to see him, I know you will._

_Pritchard._

There was an address written neatly underneath the words, which Collins stared at until his eyes went out of focus.

“What is it?” Peter asked after Collins had been frozen in place for almost a minute.

“I... I have to...” Collins stood up from the table, shoved his feet into his boots at the front door and headed out, shoving the note deep into the pocket of his coat. He had to get away, somewhere, anywhere where he didn’t have to think.

_The first time Collins had been to one of these bars, he’d been a few years younger than he was now, and it had been the day before he was leaving for the war. Back then, he’d felt weird about it, out of place, and he’d ended up leaving after one beer, feeling far too guilty. It was 1940 now, and he was twenty-three years old and a pilot and he needed something to distract himself from the horrors he’d witnessed at Dunkirk and the war and the constant stream of FarrierFarrierFarrierFarrier in his mind._

_The bar was dark and could only be accessed by descending a long, narrow flight of stairs. He was in his uniform, since he hadn’t been able to change after getting off the train, and he noticed a few of the guys in there staring at him as he passed. He acted confident, like he’d been in there a thousand times before, tried not to let it show that this was more intimidating than any battlefield or airspace._

_He ordered himself a drink, a voice close to his ear said, “Let me get that for you.”_

_The voice was so distinctly Farrier that he startled, almost letting himself imagine that it was him, but reality kicked in as soon as he saw the man’s face. If he focussed on certain points – his cupid’s bow, the curve of his jaw – he could have resembled Farrier, and in the dark, it was even easier for him to convince himself._

_“At ease, soldier, ‘m not gonna hurt you,” the man waved to the bartender to indicate that he was paying. He slid onto the stool beside Collins, although his shin pressed against the back of Collins’ calf._

_There were more drinks, and they slipped into an easy conversation that Collins was glad for, as it took himself from his thoughts for just a moment._

_It was only when the man said something flippant about the war, about the beach, that Collins was suddenly aware that they’d gotten closer, that the man was lightly holding his elbow. He shook himself away, made up some half-hearted excuse that he wouldn’t be able to recall after the fact, and raced out of the bar._

When Collins woke up, there was something cool and soothing on his forehead, and his back was in agony from sleeping somewhere uncomfortable. He forced his eyes open, his eyelashes sticking together, and blinked until the image of Peter, sat on the floor of the Dawsons’ living room, came into focus.

“Peter?” His own voice made his head throb. Every time he blinked, his eyes would go out of focus for a few seconds. “What happened?”

“You bolted halfway through dinner, and some guys from the village brought you home early hours of this morning. You were drunk, and you wouldn’t stop rambling about Farrier.” Peter’s expression turned from disapproving to pitiful halfway through the sentence, he lowered his voice, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Collins sat up just so that he could get away from Peter’s concerned gaze and tried to ignore how badly his head pounded when he moved. A wet towel fell from his forehead into his lap, he pushed it off and it landed beside him on the sofa with a wet thump.

“Tell you what...?” He pressed his fingers to his eyelids until stars exploded in his vision.

“That you love him.”

Collins tore his hand away from his face so that he could meet Peter’s eyes, the accusation made his heart jump in his chest.

“I don’t – you – I didn’t...” he spluttered, knowing full well that just his inability to find the right words to defend himself said enough.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to tell anyone,” Peter glanced down at his feet. “I understand.”

It was Collins’ turn to stare, now, reading Peter’s expression like a book. A blush had flowered on his cheeks, and he kept clearing his throat awkwardly, while picking a small piece of lint from his trousers.

“George.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement that hung between them for a few moments.

Peter nodded, “Since we were kids. I could tell how you felt about him from the moment I met you. You had so much faith that he’d take down that enemy plane, you don’t have that for someone you don’t love.”

 

It took days for Collins to look at the note again.

He threw himself into as many projects as he could find; fixing a neighbour’s faulty plumbing, washing cars and even boats, moving Mrs Hankel’s sofa to the other side of her living room. By the time the next week rolled around, Collins was sure there was not a dripping tap, dirty vehicle or loose tile in the whole of Dorset.

Finding the note again was completely accidental. He’d thrown on the coat while heading out to walk a neighbour’s dog without really thinking about it. He smoked less now that he was living with the Dawsons for the sake of being polite, but he still snuck a fag or two in when he could and was digging for one in his pocket when he came across it. Unprepared to face it again, he’d almost dropped it in a puddle, but he held onto it tight, and adamantly decided a way forward.

The next day, he packed his suitcase, said goodbye to the Dawsons, and got the first train into London. It took a lot of map-reading and a few people giving him directions for him to find where he was looking for: a building that reminded him far too much of the hospitals he’d been forced into after numerous failed missions. The hospitals that Farrier would come visit him in, concerned until he saw that Collins was unscathed. Then, he would give Collins a clip around the head and call him a bastard for scaring him. If he thought hard, he could map out an exact picture of Farrier in those moments – still in his flight uniform, cheeks flushed with concern and eyebrows furrowed.

As soon as he entered the building, he felt his heart drop. It smelt like what he remembered his grandmother’s living room to smell like; almost fragrant but dusty, like somebody had tried extremely hard to cover the smell of damp, but only had mothballs on hand.

There was a crude “welcome” sign in the reception area, the colours of which were a stark contrast to the grey faces he could see through the door behind the desk. Peering through the window, he couldn’t see anyone who even slightly resembled Farrier, but he refused to give up yet.

“Can I help you?” asked a strong London accent.

Collins quickly looked away from the door to the woman behind the desk. Her uniform screamed nurse, but her welcoming smile didn’t remind him of any nurse he’d ever seen. It unnerved him.

“I’m looking for Jack Farrier,” he answered once he’d found the words

The woman opened a hefty log book that looked like it hadn’t been opened for a while, “Are you a family member?”

“No, I’m a... I’m a friend from the RAF. I was told he was here.”

He didn’t know if he could handle being sent away, being told that Farrier wasn’t there and that there’d been a mistake. This was the exact reason he hadn’t got his hopes up in the first place.

“Could I get your name?” she asked distractedly.

“Asher Collins.”

The nurse’s hand stopped. It was as if she’d been frozen, like she was a record that had packed in. An ink blot was beginning to form on the page, where she had only written the _A_ of his name. “Your name is Collins?”

Collins felt just the slightest bit hopeful, despite her frown. “He’s mentioned me?”

She took a shaky breath and shut the log book slowly, without finishing his name or even waiting for the ink to dry, “I – I have to go speak to… I’ll only be a moment, excuse me.”

She rushed out of the waiting area, leaving Collins suddenly alone. He swallowed around the lump in his throat as he waited for her to come back, not even knowing what he was thinking. He felt like he was drowning all over again.

She returned a few moments later, a man in a long white coat in tow.

“You’re Collins?” he asked, and he was so serious that Collins was launched right back to his days in the RAF training camp.

Collins couldn’t answer his question for the ones burning in his mind, “Are you a doctor? What’s going on?”

The man smiled, but it only lasted a moment, and there was something haunting behind it, “There’s something you should know about your friend, before you see him.”

Collins couldn’t possibly wait any longer. Farrier was alive, and he was _here_ and there was no way Collins could know that and not see him immediately.

“I have to see him,” Collins insisted.

“Mr Collins...” the doctor sighed, but Collins shook his head adamantly.

“Take me to him, I don’t care what’s wrong. If he’s here and if he’s alive I have to see him. I have to know if…”

He didn’t let himself finish, couldn’t believe he’d let himself get so het up and emotional in front of two complete strangers. No… he couldn’t, he couldn’t let himself get too protective or angry or upset, that was dangerous.

The doctor and the nurse shared a glance, but the doctor nodded and said, “Very well, then. Elizabeth?”

Collins was led through the door to the side of the desk, past all of the patients who looked old and greying and already dead, to a long corridor tapering off from the main room. The doctor followed behind them as the nurse, Elizabeth, brought him to a door.

“Are you ready?” she asked. Collins just stared, transfixed, at the door, and she pushed the door open, softly calling into the room. “Jack, you have a visitor.”

Just the sight of Farrier made Collins want to vomit.

He was in a wheelchair facing the window, a blanket covering his lap. Even from the door Collins could see that he was much thinner than he should have been, and that stubble was poorly shaven and patchy. His hair also had obviously been cut by somebody inexperienced, and his hairline was interrupted by two red scabs on either temple. In the midst of war, Farrier had cared deeply about his appearance, and had often told Collins that “the way to be taken seriously was to take yourself seriously”. Farrier’s body didn’t reflect him anymore. If it weren’t for the fact that he could have picked the man out of a crowd of thousands, Collins wouldn’t have recognised him at all.

Collins took a few tentative steps forward.

“Farrier?” There was no response, so he stepped closer, placed a hand on Farrier’s shoulder. “Farrier. It’s me, it’s Collins. Asher?”

“Fortis...” Farrier mumbled, and it was so quiet Collins had to bend to hear him. “Fifty... Two-thirty... Collins...”

It felt like something extremely heavy had been placed on Collins’ chest, and he took a shocked breath. This couldn’t be Farrier, he couldn’t possibly be like this, so lifeless and void of anything that made him who he was. This wasn’t the man he’d met at the start of the war, this wasn’t the man that he’d left in the sky over Dunkirk.

“He’s suffering extreme catatonia,” the doctor explained behind him, and Collins didn’t want to look away from Farrier, but he had to.

He had to know if this was real, or if it was some elaborate joke. The doctor’s expression was solemn. It was real. It couldn’t have been real.

“There has been little information on what the Prisoners of War suffered in the camps, but we think that he was probably subdued to much torture and neglect that forced his body to shut down and revert to a catatonic state.”

Collins shut his eyes at that, hoping that maybe when he opened them this would all be over. It would all have been a dream, and he’d wake up in the Dawsons’ house or in the hospital with a concussion having fallen off a ladder fixing a roof somewhere, and Farrier would still be dead, and everything would be normal again.

He’d heard stories of soldiers with shell shock after the war, being trapped inside their minds, unable to do anything for themselves. He couldn’t believe that this was happening to Farrier. To _his_ Farrier.

He opened his eyes a moment later, and the doctor continued, “He came to us like this, saying those words.”

“Fortis... fifty... two-thirty... Collins...” Farrier droned in the background.

Collins glanced at him, “What about the scars – on his head? They look like burns...”

He didn’t know if he wanted to know the answer to that question.

“Electroshock therapy is a very common procedure for soldiers suffering from this condition.”

Collins felt like saying, _well it hasn’t fucking worked, has it?_ but he steeled himself before he could. The sheer fact that they could have put Farrier, who had already experienced so much, through even more pain made him see red.

As angry as he was, he was smart enough to know that he’d probably get told to leave if he kicked up a fuss, and not being allowed to see Farrier was the only thing he could handle less than seeing Farrier hurt. He reached out warily and ran his thumb over the puckered, scarred skin at Farrier’s temple. Careful not to get too close, too intimate.

“What have they done to you?” he whispered.

At the touch, Farrier’s eyes snapped shut. Collins felt like he was drowning all over again.

 

There was a small bed and breakfast not too far away from the hospital that Collins checked himself into. His room was small, and he had to share a bathroom with four people, but Collins wasn’t planning on staying long anyway. Only until he could get Farrier out of that wretched place, get him well.

He didn’t see much of the other residents that evening and even managed to have a bath before getting into bed. The bed was small and rickety with a thin mattress that he could feel the bars of the frame through, but he didn’t mind. It was about as comfortable as the floor of his bedroom at the Dawsons’, which he’d stopped sleeping on in favour of the bed not that long ago.

It took him what felt like hours to finally begin to drift off, mind too busy with thoughts of Farrier and the hospital and _Fortis-Fifty-Twothirty-Collins_ until he worried himself to sleep.

_Days off were scarce during the war, but there were certain times surrounding their missions that they would manage a day or two to explore wherever they were staying. Usually, they’d find a bar and drink until they could hardly see, half of the squad would go off with whatever girl they’d picked up from the bars they visited, and the other half would stumble back to the hotel where they’d set up camp._

_Money was scarce, too, so the hotels weren’t exactly luxury, and they would be forced to double up in single rooms. Collins, ever the gentleman, would always offer Farrier the bed in that situation, and wouldn’t relent until Farrier took it. Many an argument started from this, but Collins would usually end up on the floor with one pillow and no blanket._

_This time, Farrier had been so persistent that he wasn’t going to let Collins sleep on the floor again, and he’d been so annoying about it that Collins caved and climbed into the bed, shoving a pillow onto the floor for Farrier to use. Although aggravated, he was too tired and tipsy to think on it too much._

_The bed was comfortable, but Collins couldn’t fall asleep. He waited until he heard Farrier’s breath even out until he even thought about trying to. It was as if he’d been asked to stay awake, looking out for the enemy while Farrier slept soundly beside him. Sleeping on the floor gave him the ability to do that, to place himself between Farrier and the door, even when asleep, he would be hyperaware of any movement like some sort of guard dog. Not being able to do that set him on edge, and he’d begun to scratch at his thigh uncomfortably when he heard Farrier clear his throat and turn over, and that was the last sound he heard before he fell asleep._

_“Collins, wake up,” Farrier whispered urgently._

_Collins woke like he’d just heard a gunshot. “What’s wrong?” he asked, almost immediately alert._

_“Nothing,” Farrier replied, and Collins could hardly make out his face in the darkness. He let himself settle back a little, “It was getting cold down there, could I...”_

_He didn’t have to say anything else for Collins to know exactly what he meant. They stared each other down for a moment, both wondering if this was a responsible boundary to cross and if the other was thinking the same thing, until Collins lifted the corner of the duvet and Farrier climbed under it gratefully._

_“Thank you,” Farrier muttered._

_Collins grunted and turned on his side so that he was facing away from Farrier. The bed was really too small to fit two fully grown men, but Collins would make it work if it killed him. If Farrier was cold, Collins would let him use his body heat without making it uncomfortable. He turned back over to look at Farrier’s sleeping face and realised that if he needed anything, Collins would give it to him without question._

_He dozed thinking of giving Farrier his kidneys, and he was hardly awake when he felt something warm and soft touch to his lips, and it took him a moment to realise that Farrier was kissing him and that he should have been doing something about it, but he couldn’t move or think or breathe until Farrier pulled away and settled back down as if nothing had happened._

_Collins didn’t sleep at all for the rest of that night._

Collins woke with a start, immediately sitting up like something had pulled him there. There was a phantom warmth on his lips, but when he brought his fingertips to his mouth, he couldn’t feel anything but the cold sweat that prickled his skin. The memory had been unexpected and new, and although he hadn’t – could never possibly have – forgotten about it, he had been avoiding it for so long that it felt like just a dream, like it hadn’t happened, and he was just as deluded as those soldiers he’d heard had gone insane from the mustard gas.

If there was one thing that he was certain of, it was that he would get Farrier back, even if it killed him.


	4. 1946

**January 16 th, 1946.**

The morning after Collins had left for London, Peter was changing his bedsheets when he heard the phone’s shrill ring from the downstairs hallway. He threw his bedsheets down and sprinted down the stairs with footfalls so heavy he was surprised the wood didn’t splinter under his feet. His mother, who’d been about to answer the call, stepped back and allowed her son to pick it up.

“Dawson residence,” he repeated the greeting his father had taught him to use, slightly out of breath.

“Peter, it’s me,” Peter felt a sense of relief wash over him upon hearing Collins’ voice. “I’m calling to tell you that I’m not going to be back for a while.”

Peter’s chest tightened, and he inhaled sharply. “Why?”

“I found Farrier, but it’s going to be more difficult than I thought.” Collins said. He gave no indication that he would give more information.

Peter dropped his head forward, against the wall of the hallway. What did he mean? Was he _never_ coming back? Had he found Farrier and lost interest in Dorset, in Peter? “Okay.”

“Tell your pa I’m sorry that I’ve left him with no help.”

Not even a message for him, which Peter guessed was to be expected now that he’d found his old friend and had no use for him anymore. He turned to look at his parents, who were watching him expectantly, “You can tell him yourself.”

He held the phone out to his dad and took the stairs two at a time back to his room. After slamming the door, he dropped down against it and swallowed against the bitter taste of jealousy in his mouth.

_Collins had been living in Dorset for a month, and Peter hadn’t been surprised to find that he settled in very quickly with his parents and the neighbours. Everyone loved him, and, although taken aback by the attention, Collins seemed to like them too. He was kind and charismatic – he had quickly filled the place that Jonathan had left when he died, a position that Peter could only dream of filling._

_They spent a day out on the Moonstone, the only time they ever got to spend with only each other. She’d had a leak in her hull that Mr Dawson asked Collins to patch up, and Peter insisted on coming with him even though he wasn’t strictly needed; Collins could have easily done it by himself. He found odd jobs for Peter to do, though, so that he didn’t get bored._

_Once they were done, Peter grabbed two beers from the boat and passed one to Collins._

_He clocked his expression. “I’m old enough to drink.”_

_Collins took the bottle from Peter and dropped down on the dock. His feet hung over the edge, dangerously close to touching the water. The sun was just beginning to set, casting an orange glow over the horizon._

_Sitting down, too, Peter took a swig of his beer and watched the water swirl below his boots. Warmth spread through the side of him pressed against Collins, and he wondered how the man could be so warm while just wearing just a white t-shirt and some trousers which he’d turned up at the cuffs so as not to get them wet. Along with his clunky boots which he was rarely seen outside without, of course._

_“You’re going to catch your death, you know,” Peter said absently._

_A laugh rumbled through Collins and Peter felt it in his chest._

_“You sound just like your ma.”_

_The line of his face was framed by the fast-dying orange light, and Peter could see where his regulated short-back-and-sides haircut was beginning to grow in again, the long column of his throat when he tipped his head back to drink._

_The man turned to him, then, and Peter’s breath caught in his throat. He didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t bother to think about what he was about to do before he’d leant forward and pressed his mouth to Collins’. For the briefest of moments, he felt the rough, day-old stubble of his chin, and then he was pushed away._

_Collins wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, staring adamantly at the water so as not to look at Peter._

_He’d gotten it wrong, he’d read Collins’ signs – the little touches as he passed, ruffling Peter’s hair when he said something that made him laugh, the lingering glances – wrong. He scrambled to his feet and took a few hurried steps backwards before he realised that Collins was frozen on the dock, fingers clutching the edge of the wood and his eyes shut._

_“I’m sorry,” Peter knew it wouldn’t change anything; Collins was disgusted._

_Collins’ jaw worked around his words, “Don’t. You’re confused...”_

_“I’m not.”_

_Collins raised a hand, immediately shutting him up._

_“You are.” He patted the space beside him, and Peter tentatively sat down again. Close to him again, he could now see that the look on Collins’ face wasn’t one of disgust. Their eyes met. “You lost someone you loved, you’re confused and looking for the first person who’ll give you the validation you want. You’re like my brother, Pete. Please don’t – don’t ruin that for feelings that you don’t understand.”_

_Peter wanted to scream, wanted to shout that he knew what he was doing, that he wasn’t confused, that he didn’t need validation. He was twenty-one and he understood his feelings perfectly well, thank you very much!_

_He couldn’t do that; he knew that Collins was right._

_“Just because you’re queer doesn’t mean you have to jump on the first man you see,” Collins bumped their shoulders together to try and lighten the mood._

_Peter tried to laugh, but it just sounded forced. He felt nothing but relief for Collins’ humoured reaction, but also couldn’t hide his embarrassment._

_“I’m sorry,” he said again._

_“Stop saying that.” Collins handed him his bottle. “Just drink.”_

Hot, angry tears stained Peter’s cheeks as he listened to the muffled sounds of his parents conversing with Collins downstairs. He scrubbed both hands through his messy hair, tugging it firmly before letting his head drop back against the door with a thud. Eventually, he heard his parents say goodbye to Collins, and there was silence in the hallway again as they moved back into the kitchen. _Not even a goodbye_.

He sniffed, hard, and then muttered, “Traitor.”

 

Collins had been in London for three days, now, and most of his day was spent at the hospital with Farrier. Although not much progress had been made by way of communication, he had convinced the nurses to allow him to shave Farrier’s face properly and fix the mess that had been made of the sides of his hair. He may not have been a trained barber, but there were many times during the war where he had trimmed his own hair rather than waiting, so it wasn’t difficult for him to fix the patchiest areas with the same straight razor he had used for his jaw.

The first revelation came one day while he was feeding Farrier. Even though he was unresponsive, Farrier was able to swallow small amounts of blended food on his own, if it was placed in his mouth. It was uncomfortable to have to feed him like a child, but Collins preferred that he do it instead of a random nurse who Farrier didn’t know.

He’d been spooning small amounts of porridge into Farrier’s mouth, talking idly as he did so – the nurses had informed him that audible stimulation was sometimes the only way to keep Farrier awake – when he noticed that Farrier’s blinking was erratic. At first, he had thought it was a response to the light from the window, but the pattern of his blinking seemed to change with Collins’ words, almost as if he was responding.

It wasn’t until he asked him a question about the food that he understood.

One long blink, roughly three seconds, followed by three short blinks.

A short blink followed by another three-second blink.

A three-second blink and two short blinks.

He repeated this sequence, and Collins placed down the bowl and spoon and reached into the pocket of his coat, taking out the small hand notebook he kept there.

“Elizabeth, do you have a pen?” he asked the nurse who was replacing the sheets on Farrier’s bed.

Although confused, she nodded wordlessly and handed over a pen from the front pocket of her uniform.

He pressed the pen onto the page, watching the pattern of his blinks.

_Officer Kingston had insisted that after their mission, the whole of Fortis were to visit a pub at which he was a regular. It wasn’t going unnoticed that their numbers were dwindling, and as more seats in the mess hall were becoming vacant, morale began to drop significantly. They were losing members, and therefore vital roles in their group, not only in the sky, but also on the ground – the team dynamic was collapsing. Visiting Kingston’s pub was supposed to build back up some of what they had lost._

_Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and Collins was almost surprised by how well the other boys got on with the locals. They were known to be rowdy at best, having been kicked out of one too many pubs for his liking. Instead of joining in with their raucous festivities, he took a seat at the bar and chatted to the bartender while finishing off his beer. Eventually, the bartender had to serve other customers, and he decided to reside to one of the rooms that Kingston had booked them above the pub._

_Collins realised not too long after heading for the stairs that he didn’t actually have the key, and that Kingston had given it to Farrier instead. With a sigh, he scanned the patrons and Fortis members in the bar until he found Farrier, in some form of arm-wrestling competition with Alves, the oldest Fortis member, and the only one who could even attempt to match Farrier in strength. There were quite a few of the other squad members crowded around, cheering for their respective side. As Collins approached, Farrier slammed the back of Alves’ hand onto the table with a victorious roar. Half of the men groaned, and the other half cheered as bets were passed._

_“You’re a bastard, Farrier,” Alves dug in his pockets for some coins._

_Collins cleared his throat to get the attention of the men._

_“Am I interrupting?” he tore his eyes away from Farrier’s grinning face before his staring would be noticed._

_“Farrier is wiping the floor with all of us,” Kingston complained. “He beat Alves!”_

_The man in question whacked him for that, and Collins huffed out a laugh, “I saw. Well, I’ve just come to get my room key from your champion.”_

_Farrier reached into his back pocket for the key and passed it to Collins, he was still smiling, but concern had drawn his eyebrows together and lowered his voice, “Everything alright?”_

_“Aye,” Collins checked that the key was the right one – Farrier was forgetful when he was drunk. “Just want to get some sleep in before we go back tomorrow.”_

_“The beer’s got to him,” Alves said. “I thought you were Scottish, Collins?”_

_Collins replied to that with his middle finger._

_As soon as he got back to the room, he sat at the small desk in the corner and took out the small notebook that he had started to use as a diary, of sorts. A while ago, he’d realised that it was likely he was going to die at war. If he did, he wanted there to be something left of him._

_Farrier came through the door not too long later. He didn’t seem too drunk as he kicked off his boots and fell back onto the bed with a grunt._

_“How much did you win?” Collins glanced at him over his shoulder._

_Farrier’s eyes were shut as he replied, “A couple of bob, two packets of fags from Alves.”_

_“Successful evening, then.”_

_Farrier smirked, and then yawned. Collins turned back to his writing, and there was silence for a long while._

_“Who do you have at home, Ash?” Farrier asked, long after Collins had thought he’d fallen asleep._

_“What?” Collins turned in his seat to look at Farrier again._

_The man pushed himself up so that he was resting against the headboard. “You must have someone waiting for you back in Scotland. A bird or something.”_

_Collins thought of his parents, who had passed. Then, he thought of his brother, who had wanted nothing to do with him since they were teenagers. No girls back home had ever taken much interest in him, not even when he’d enlisted. He shook his head. “There’s nobody waiting for me.”_

_Farrier masked his pity well._

_“What about you?” Collins asked, even though he didn’t want to know the answer. “Wife and kids back in Cornwall?”_

_Farrier laughed. A hearty, deep laugh that came from his stomach. “Do I seem like a family man to you, Ash?”_

_He’d never really thought about it that way. For all the time he’d known Farrier, he’d assumed that there was a pretty young woman and a young boy with Farrier’s features waiting for him back home. That when Farrier wanted privacy, it was because he was reading their letters, or crying over a photo of them he kept in a pocket watch. He had never found any evidence of this – not even that the pocket watch existed – but it was perhaps wishful thinking. It made his confusing feelings easier if Farrier was well accounted for._

_Instead of saying all that, Collins shrugged._

_“My old man died in the war,” Farrier shifted himself down the bed so that he was sat on the foot of it, in arms reach of Collins. Their knees were almost touching. “My mother passed just before I joined the Air Force. My sister, Joann, has a husband and two children – she’s not losing any sleep over me.”_

_Seemingly of its own accord, Farrier’s hand brushed against Collins’ right knee. Both of them watched as his fingertips traced a small, irrational pattern on his trouser leg. Collins glanced at his face. “No wife, then?”_

_Farrier met his gaze and shook his head. Carefully, Collins leant forward an inch, waiting for a response. When nothing came, he inched forward again, and again, until his intentions were clear. His eyes fell closed when he felt Farrier’s breath on his mouth, and he waited for a moment, their lips only an inch or so apart. Instead of shoving him away or reeling backwards, Farrier placed one big hand on the nape of Collins’ neck, pulled him close and kissed him._

“Does he have any family?” Elizabeth asked him the next afternoon.

He had sat most of the day with Farrier, and his notebook was almost full of the Morse code messages Farrier had been giving. The doctors and nurses in the hospital were all extremely impressed that he’d managed to figure it out, but it didn’t seem like Farrier would respond to anyone other than Collins. Being able to talk to Farrier again, even if it was a stunted and long process, was enough to make Collins want to cry.

Communicating seemed to have taken it out of him, though, and he had fallen asleep with his chin dropped to his chest. Collins knew Farrier would have felt degraded had he known that he had seen that, so he politely stepped outside while Elizabeth got him into bed.

She then offered him a cup of coffee, so that’s where he was now, leaning up against the countertop of a nurses’ rec room with a hot cup of coffee and the nurse responsible for the care of his best friend.

“A sister, Joann,” he said, after a moment. “He told me that she was married, but he never mentioned her surname.”

Elizabeth nodded pensively, “Anyone else?”

“No.” The lump in his throat felt like a stone. “Joann was all he had.”

She placed her petite hand on his arm comfortingly, “He’s making incredible progress, I’ve never seen a patient in his condition communicate so effectively.”

It was probably true, but he couldn’t get rid of the feeling of dread that had resided in his chest since he’d arrived in London. When he’d allowed himself to think about Farrier being alive, and reuniting with him, the other pilot had always been in bad shape, but he never could have imagined this. He had been stripped of, not only his dignity and his health, but his personality. Everything that made him _Farrier_. It had been hard enough when he had seemed a shell of the man he’d once been, but now that Collins knew that Farrier was _in there_ , as much a prisoner in his own body as he had been in the POW camp, it didn’t bear thinking about.

 

The Morse code blinking had been a revelation that had bled into a full week of stunted communication, in which Farrier would give him infrequent, one-word snippets of information. Although it was never enough to be called a conversation – Collins doubted whether he could comprehend anything he was saying – but the words that Farrier had given to him were enough to understand what he was trying to tell him. _Beach. Fire. Germans. Camp. Torture._

But they’d stopped. Farrier, maybe exhausted, maybe feeling hopeless, stopped communicating altogether. The words – _“Fortis, fifty, two-thirty, Collins”_ – came back, and the shred of hope for Farrier’s recovery had gone with their return. Before this, Collins had never known the feeling of hating his own name.

Farrier hardly blinked at all, now, not even when Collins took a seat in front of his wheelchair and softly said his name. Elizabeth had warned him that there had been a lapse in their progress, but seeing it was so much more difficult than he could have imagined.

“Farrier? Can you understand me?”

He tried not to let too much emotion spill over the surface; that was dangerous. Even knowing that, it didn’t stop him from leaning forward marginally and softening his tone.

“Please, Farrier, just – just do something to let me know you understand me.”

“Fortis...” Farrier droned. “Fifty...”

A wave of dread engulfed Collins, causing him to drop back in his chair and pinch the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes shut to stop himself from crying. He didn’t want to cry in front of Farrier. He couldn’t do that to him.

Elizabeth lightly brushed his shoulder with her hand, and he looked up at her through his misty eyes. “How has this happened?”

He didn’t know if she would have an answer to that question, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear it if she did.

“I have to check up on my other patients, will you be alright by yourself?”

She waited for him to nod before smiling remorsefully and leaving the room, heels clicking on the wood floor as she went. After a moment, Collins realised that his hand had gravitated to his chest, over the indent in his shirt made by the ID tags.

“Two-thirty... Collins...”

His fingers momentarily traced the chain around his neck.

“Fortis...”

Hands ever so slightly trembling, he slipped the chain over his head. The tags felt as heavy as bricks in his palm.

“Fifty...”

He leaned forward, gently taking Farrier’s hand from his lap. It was limp, and his skin was cold to the touch, but it was also calloused and rough – just as it had been all those years ago. An engineer’s hands, a pilot’s hands, a prisoner’s hands, the hands of a man who had been through war.

“Two-thirty...”

With careful touches, he unfolded Farrier’s hand, turning it upwards so that his palm was open to the ceiling, and placed the tags on it, the chain curled up around them. He placed

one of his hands below Farrier’s, and the other on top, encasing the tags. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for.

“Collins...”

The tips of Farrier’s fingers twitched. Hardly even a fracture of a movement, but it was enough for a shot of fervour to flow through Collins.

“Farrier?” he looked at his face, still blank and faraway with its expression. He distantly remembered something Elizabeth had told him about involuntary muscle spasms. “Can you do that again?”

It seemed that Elizabeth had been right, Farrier’s hand didn’t move in response to his question, there was no shift in his lifeless expression – he didn’t even blink or say one of the words. Maybe, Collins thought, he should just accept that Farrier was gone.

And then, he felt pressure against his hand, a subtle shift against his forefinger that made him glance down. Farrier had curled his fingers almost completely, holding onto Collins’ hand with increasing strength until he had completely trapped his finger. When Collins looked back up with disbelief, Farrier had closed his eyes.

If he had been a bigger man, Collins wouldn’t have cried as much as he did when Farrier’s eyes reopened, and in them he saw the unapologetic determination he had begun to associate with him during the war.

Collins gripped Farrier’s hand like he was dying. The chain was digging into his palm, but he didn’t care.


	5. 1940

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you're not reading the chapter titles/start dates: THIS CHAPTER IS A FLASHBACK!

**_May 15 th, 1940._ **

Farrier had a home in Cornwall. Collins knew this for two reasons; the first being that Farrier would mention it whenever he was given the chance, and the second being that he had been invited to stay there. Finding out that Farrier had been born and raised somewhere other than London had been a surprise to Collins, since he didn’t have much knowledge of anywhere in England that wasn’t the capital city, but he was anxious to explore Farrier’s hometown.

They’d been together for almost two months – if stealing kisses in empty rooms and brushing hands when walking side by side on the airstrip could be called ‘being together’. Four days of leave from service meant they all got to go home, but for Collins, home meant two full days of travel and a night on his brother’s sofa, so it was only sensible that he would save himself the hassle and stay with someone who lived closer.

They settled in an empty train compartment in the early evening, most of the squad were waiting until morning to start their respective journeys home, but the train journey to Cornwall from the base was a long one, and Collins wanted to get as much time away from service as possible.

Rain beat on the window of the train as it trundled out of the station, Collins watched the droplets roll down the grimy pane of glass as Farrier rummaged around in his bag, which he’d already stored in the luggage compartment above their heads. Unlike most men, Farrier didn’t care much for tucking his shirt into his trousers if it wasn’t strictly necessary, and he’d apparently forgone an undershirt as well, so when he stretched up to reach his bag, his shirt rode up to show a sliver of the tanned skin of his torso.

Collins looked out of the window as Farrier finally located what he was looking for and dropped down onto the opposite bench with a book in hand. “Everything okay, Ash?”

“Of course,” Collins smiled, looking away from the window.

Farrier lifted his arms slightly, and it was only when he nodded to his lap that Collins understood the invitation and rested his feet on Farrier’s thighs. Seeming quite content with that position, Farrier rested his book against Collins’ ankles and read as Collins settled in for the journey.

Accustomed now to sleeping in the most uncomfortable and awkward positions, Collins napped pleasantly for the majority of the journey. He wasn’t sure if Farrier slept much, or if he read for most of the night, but when he woke up, he was lying on the bench with Farrier’s thick jacket blanketing him, keeping him warm. Farrier himself had curled up on the opposite bench like a babe, head pillowed on his forearms and knees pulled up to his chest.

The train had stopped moving, Collins noticed as he sat up and stretched, Farrier’s jacket falling onto the bench beside him. Outside the window, he could see nothing but expansive countryside, and when he opened it and leaned his head out to survey the area, he found a woman in the next compartment over leaning out of her own window with a cigarette in hand.

“Excuse me, Miss?” he called to her.

She turned to him, a smile gracing her neatly-painted red lips. “Good morning, Sir.”

“Where are we?”

“We passed through Plymouth about twenty minutes ago,” she flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette with a light tap. “Should be an hour until we arrive in Cornwall. Do you want one?”

She held out her box of cigarettes, and he took one from it.

“Thank you,” he said, for both the cigarette and the information. The train had stopped in possibly the most scenic location it could have chosen, and he admired the dewy fields as he lit the cigarette with a match from his pocket.

He didn’t realise that she was still watching him.

“Where are you from?” she patted one of her blonde victory rolls. She had probably just re-rolled them, if she had been on the train as long as he had.

“Scotland,” he said. “Glasgow.”

She took another drag from her cigarette, “I love your accent.”

He smiled in response, unsure of how else he should reply. “I’m actually – uh – I’m coming from Norwich, though.”

“Do tell.” Although her tone was teasing, she seemed genuinely intrigued.

“I’m in the RAF,” he replied through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Based in Norwich.”

“How brave of you,” she said, somewhere between genuine and playful. The train horn sounded, and she stubbed out her cigarette just below the window. “I’m Emily, by the way.”

He stubbed his out, too, “Asher.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Asher,” she said, before ducking back into the train and shutting the window.

For most of the next hour, Farrier shuffled around the compartment, bleary and silent – he never slept very well while travelling, and it made him extremely difficult to deal with in the mornings, Collins had learned.

The platform was bustling with people when they stepped off the train in Liskeard. Despite his sleepy grumpiness which seemed to have continued through the hours, Farrier insisted on carrying Collins’ bag as well as his own. With their perpetually aching feet and lack of any substantial rest, they hailed a cab to take them through the winding country lanes to Coverack.

Farrier sat upfront, and Collins, alone in the backseat, stared out of the window of the cab like a child, awed by the beauty of the Cornish countryside. If he really thought, put himself back in the mindset that he’d had before he’d enlisted, he could convince himself that he was back home. For a moment, he thought of taking Farrier to Glasgow, introducing him to Archie, his brother, and Archie’s wife Moira. Bonnie, Collins’ overzealous niece, would love hanging off of Farrier’s strong arm, he could almost hear her fighting with her brother over which one of them Farrier preferred. They were at constant, playful war with each other, just as he and his brother had been at that age.

He was still thinking about this when they arrived in Coverack, a cosy village characterised by cobbled roads and stone houses. Farrier paid the driver, and Collins climbed out of the car to get their bags from the boot.

Farrier wrestled the bags from Collins’ grip as soon as the cab had pulled away from the pavement, “It’s not a long walk, now.”

The village was just starting to come to life; an old man unlocked the door of a bookshop, and the aroma of freshly-baked bread floated out into the street as a woman came out of the bakery, a toddler under one arm and a loaf of bread under the other. It was almost as if the war wasn’t happening here – the people of this town existed without it, despite it. Collins saw why Farrier chose to continue living there, even though Joann lived in Bath, so he had no family left there to return for.

They turned through a lane to another street, and Farrier led the way past the few cars parked on the curbs, and the children playing with sticks in the road, to one of the many stone houses lining the street. The aged wooden door creaked as Farrier pushed it open, and Collins found himself having to stoop ever so slightly to fit through it. It opened out into a cramped hallway which had a set of wooden stairs on the left, and another door to the right which Farrier knocked on thrice.

It was flung open a few moments later, revealing a woman with a wrinkled smile and grey hair in bright pink rollers. She gasped upon seeing Farrier in the doorway, and wordlessly pulled him into a crushing hug.

Farrier was the one to break the embrace, “How are you, Mrs J?”

“I’d be better if I had heard from you recently,” she admonished gently, her right hand resting on his cheek. “I swear, you get more handsome every time I see you.”

Farrier glanced at Collins with a bashful grin, “Mrs J, this is Asher Collins, my friend from the RAF. Collins, this is Mrs J, my landlady.”

She turned on him with an analytical gaze which made him shift uncomfortably between his feet. His accent, somehow, manifested itself more when he was nervous, “It’s a pleasure, Ma’am.”

He took her proffered hand and laid a polite kiss on her wrinkled knuckles, causing her to make a sound somewhere between a sigh and a hum of approval. “Call me Suzie, dear; all that _Ma’am_ and _Mrs_ business makes me feel much older than I am.”

Collins wasn’t sure whether it was his personality or his accent that expedited his ability to gain the trust of any woman over the age of forty.

“Do you have my key?” Farrier asked after a moment, impatient to get home and settled. They didn’t have enough time to waste standing about. “I leave it with her when I’m not here,” he explained, quieter, once Suzie had disappeared back into her own apartment to fetch the key. “In case I don’t come home, she can clear my flat and sell it on.”

The thought of someone simply packing up Farrier’s home and passing it on to another person, if he were to die at war, made Collins scowl. Farrier caught this expression, “Don’t look like that.”

“Then don’t talk like that.”

Farrier’s expression hardened, and for a fleeting moment, Collins wasn’t looking at his Farrier, but the seasoned officer with a rumoured past in prize fighting. The pilot who’d roughed him up his first week in the war and left him with a bruised cheek for the best part of a month. Throughout the eight months since, Farrier had mellowed somewhat, a personality shift many in Fortis attributed to Collins’ mere existence. After their first roughhouse, and the subsequent bollocking by Fortis Leader, they’d never fallen into another altercation, but they hadn’t needed to – Collins had learned his place.

The stairs creaked and groaned as the two pilots climbed them, led by Farrier, and both of them caught the creaking floorboard on the landing just outside Farrier’s front door.

Farrier placed their bags on the ground so that he could unlock the door. “It’s not much...”

“I don’t care.” Collins watched Farrier jiggle the lock until it gave and twisted, and the door opened with a _click_.

He was right, it wasn’t much. However, Collins had been right, too; he didn’t care, it was Farrier’s home, and that was really enough.

Collins felt quite voyeuristic walking around Farrier’s home, observing each room like it was some sort of museum, a living document of Farrier’s livelihood outside of the war. Farrier led him first into the living room, through the door on the far right – it was cramped and equally as musty as the hallway, with two small sofas, a coffee table and a wireless squashed into the limited space. There were photographs, framed on the mantelpiece, which Collins didn’t investigate any further.

Walking into the bedroom caused a shift in the air around them. It was similarly as cramped as the rest of the flat, but Collins didn’t focus on the small wooden wardrobe tucked into the corner, or the shelf of photographs and books, or the art hung on the walls in an attempt to brighten the space. His eyes were trained on the double bed, which was pressed flush against the far wall, and – from head to foot – perfectly filled the width of the room.

Farrier placed their bags down next to the door and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, shuffling his feet on the threadbare carpet.

Collins gestured behind him, in the general direction of the living room, “I’ll sleep on the sofa, if –”

Before he could finish that thought, Farrier turned suddenly and kissed him squarely on the mouth. His hands were still in his pockets, but Collins’ were free, and he didn’t quite know what to do with them, so he just placed them feather-light on Farrier’s chest. Not holding, or grabbing with any particular force, just touching, feeling the warmth of his skin and the strong, steady beat of his heart. Although it was chaste and short, it was gratifying, and the closest thing to normal they had ever had.

Collins revelled in the short moment that followed, where he could take in the sight of Farrier’s face in the light coming in through the windows. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was just slightly open, he’d never looked so relaxed.

He opened his eyes, blinking and blue and slightly glazed, “Tea?”

“Please.”

The kitchen was adjacent to the living room, windowless and stuffy with a buzzing light and wooden counters on the left-hand side which took over half of the space, and there was a long shelf above them that Farrier took the kettle down from. He filled it from the tap and placed it on the stove while opening one of the cupboards next to the oven, making a satisfied humming noise when he found a full tin of PG Tips. “Mrs J must have done a shop while I was gone.”

When she’d handed over the keys, she’d also given them a half-full glass bottle of milk, which Farrier had to retrieve from the nightstand in the bedroom where he’d accidentally left it. Collins leaned against the opposite wall, while Farrier flicked on the small wireless above the fridge, foot tapping subtly as Bing Crosby’s recently-released cover of _You Made Me Love You_ played out into the small kitchen.

“ _You made me love you, and all the time you knew it, I guess you always knew it..._ ” Farrier sang along as he made the tea. His voice was raspy and not quite as sultry as Crosby’s, but it was perfect all the same. Collins didn’t know this version of the song, and he wondered how Farrier had learned it.

He poured a little milk into both of the cups, and then spooned two sugars into Collins’.

The song swung into the bridge.

“ _Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme what I cry for. You know you’ve got the brand of kisses that I’d die for. You know you made me love you._ ” Now facing Collins, Farrier tilted his head slightly, speaking over the music. “What are you smiling at?”

Collins hadn’t even realised that he’d been grinning fondly. He shook his head but couldn’t quite wipe the smile off his face. “Nothing.”

Farrier watched him with an aporetic stare as he handed over a teacup that looked almost comically small in his big hands. The tea wasn’t _good_ , but nothing was due to the rations, and it was warm in his hands and his throat, so he couldn’t have complained.

“We should go for a drive later.” Farrier leaned back against the counter, his own cup warming his palms.

“You have a car?”

“A piece of crap, really,” Farrier said. “She’ll take us through the country, though.”

“Will we listen to more Bing Crosby?”

Farrier laughed, scrubbed his right hand through his hair, “If you’d like.”

“I’m fuckin’ about, Jack.” Collins tapped the toe of his boot against Farrier’s. “I’d love to.”

They didn’t end up driving that day, choosing instead to spend the remainder of the morning strolling around the village, where Farrier showed Collins all of the best shops and his usual haunts. There was a pub on the corner, near the bookstore and the bakery, that they didn’t go into, but Farrier joyfully recounted stories from his brief time working as a bartender there, before the war. From the bakery, they bought one loaf of bread and a small leg of lamb from the butchers’ shop around the corner. Farrier briefly explained that, while the ration was still prevalent in Coverack, the village was largely self-sustaining considering the amount of farms close by. The odd leg of lamb or scrap of steak, which would be treated like gold in other places in England, weren’t all too hard to come by.

In the afternoon, they lazed about the flat. Farrier began cooking a small portion of meat, and Collins took a short bath before they collapsed onto the sofa in the living room, Collins’ head in Farrier’s lap, legs hooked over the arm of the seat, and the _Women’s Hour_ playing over the wireless. Neither of them particularly cared about the unsuitable entertainment; Collins felt perfectly content dozing with Farrier’s hands combing gently through his hair.

After eating a humble tea of buttered bread and lamb, they stumbled into bed by half past eight, both exhausted from the previous night’s travel. They kissed languidly, free of any of the haste or anxiety that possessed the kisses they shared at Sculthorpe.

Collins woke up with the sun, his face pressed against Farrier’s firm, warm chest, left hand resting just below Farrier’s collarbone, and their legs tangled together, messy and pleasant. Just as he had been the afternoon before, Farrier was running his fingers through Collins’ messy hair, fingertips grazing lightly over his scalp. He opened his eyes to find Farrier awake, his right hand holding a book and his left the culprit of the hair-ruffling, and although it would have been easy to alert him that he was awake, to sit up or stretch or kiss him, he left it for a few more minutes, watching Farrier patiently place his book down on the bed when he had to turn the pages, so as not to rouse him.

“I know you’re awake,” Farrier’s morning rasp was a low rumble of his chest against Collins’ right ear.

He shushed him, mumbling, “Gi’ it a momen’, won’ you. ‘M comfor’able.”

“You’re disgustingly Glaswegian in the morning.” But he didn’t make any attempt to move – he stayed a solid, unmoving presence beneath Collins and continued to read one-handed as he dozed.

As delightful as this morning was, Collins eventually found that he absolutely had to move. He slipped out from where he was wrapped around Farrier, who glanced up from his book, “Where are you off to?”

“Nee’ ta’ piss,” Collins yawned. Farrier was right, he _was_ disgustingly Glaswegian in the morning – he’d just never been around an Englishman early enough for it to be pointed out.

By the time he shuffled back into the bedroom, face splashed with cold water that helped a little to shake off the sleep-fog, Farrier was picking out clothes from the wardrobe.

Collins kissed the cold skin on the back of his neck, just because he could, “Are we goin’ out today?”

“I did promise,” Farrier’s eyes shut as Collins pressed his lips more firmly to the back of his neck. “However, if you wanted to just stay in this room all day, I wouldn’t complain.”

The three inches of height that Collins had on Farrier allowed him to slip his hands around his waist and rest his forehead comfortably against the back of Farrier’s head. “As nice as that would be...” He pressed another kiss to the base of his hairline. “The neighbours would talk.”

Farrier sighed contentedly, “Let them.”

Despite Farrier’s protestations, they were in his Ford Coupe by lunchtime. A small picnic consisting of sandwiches, a handful of Suzie’s homemade biscuits and two bottles of Coca-Cola they had managed to pick up from one of the village stores sat wrapped in a tea-towel on the backseat, and Collins couldn’t help but spare an anxious look back at it, wondering exactly how much jolt it would take to send it flying off the seat and onto the floor.

He watched Farrier fit the key into the ignition and struggle to start the car twice before the engine awoke. “When was the last time you drove?”

Farrier fixed him with an emphatic glare, “I’ve been flying Spitfires for three years, Ash, I can handle a Ford Coupe.”

“I meant –” Collins grabbed the door, terrified, as the car jostled madly with the slightest of acceleration. “ _I meant,_ is this car still fit to drive?”

“She’s fine,” Farrier scoffed, over the anguished coughing of the car’s engine.

He hadn’t been wrong when he’d called her a piece of crap. But, as promised, she carried them out of the village and through the winding country lanes leading away from Coverack. Collins wasn’t convinced they were going any faster than they would have on foot, but Farrier seemed to be in his element. He came alive when in control of a machine, whether it was a top of the line Spitfire in a battle zone or an almost broken 1932 Ford Coupe in a country lane, he could be found grinning like a madman and whistling merrily to himself as he steered.

Never having been one for facial hair, Collins had shaved his face in the bathroom that morning, but Farrier hadn’t bothered with the razor. Stubble had begun to grow in on his jaw and his chin, and his upper lip was blessed with the shadow of a potential moustache. Collins wondered if, should the war end or he retire from it, Farrier would grow a full beard. He couldn’t imagine it, but he liked the feeling of the stubble brushing against his skin when he reached across the car and lightly touched Farrier’s face. They were far enough away from anyone, now, that Farrier felt free to drop his chin and kiss Collins’ knuckles.

Coverack was blessed with being a seaside village, so, after just twenty minutes of driving, they found a secluded area of the coast where they could set up in the shadow of a large oak tree, on the edge of a low cliff overlooking the ocean. Farrier laid down a large blanket they had brought, and Collins unwrapped their small picnic, laying it out on the blanket. Farrier sat first, legs straight out in front of him, slightly apart, and Collins took that as an invitation to sit between them, slouched so that the top of his head rested just below Farrier’s chin.

There was a chill in the air, but their shared body heat kept them both warm as they ate quietly. All Collins could hear was the squawking of the gulls and the steady thrum of Farrier’s pulse, and he was exactly where he needed to be.

Hours of kissing lazily in the grass left them both – and their clothes – looking a little worse for wear, but Collins wasn’t sure there was another time in his life where he’d felt this little tension in his shoulders. Of course, the war still raged on in the country and in his mind, but at this moment, with this man, on this cliff in Coverack, Cornwall, he didn’t have a care in the world.

 

If Suzie had any idea of what was going on between them, she didn’t mention it. Not even when she saw them, coming home from their picnic, with swollen mouths and glassy eyes and grass stains on their clothes. Or the next morning, after they’d stumbled in late in the night from Farrier’s aforementioned pub, and Collins had been convinced that the squeaking of the bed against the floorboards that were directly above her bedroom had woken her. She brought them the morning paper and the milk delivery without word of any disturbance, and if she noticed the obvious hand-print bruise on Farrier’s right bicep, she didn’t mention that either.

Sooner than either of them would have liked, and although the days had felt like weeks, it came to their last day in Coverack. They had to start their journey early, since it would take them ten hours on the train to get back to Sculthorpe, but it didn’t deter them from taking their time in the morning – bathing together, shaving side-by-side and each eating one slice of toast and a cup of tea before packing their things. Suzie gave them both, even Collins, a tight squeeze of a hug and a kiss on both cheeks and let them go with a basket of homemade biscuits for them to share. On the train home, Collins rested his feet on Farrier’s lap and listened to him read aloud.

The next week, they were assigned to Dunkirk.


	6. 1946

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has a brief discussion of disability containing language that could potentially be viewed in today’s society as ableist. this note is a gentle reminder that this story is set in the forties, so the opinions represented, and language used by the characters obviously don’t reflect my own personal views and opinions, and are only written that way to reflect the common view at the time. <3

**February 20 th, 1946.**

It had been over a month since Peter had last spoken to Collins, and he was busy. He’d found himself a job at the local newspaper, which occupied most of his days, and in the evenings, he would help his dad on the dock, or with the odd jobs around the house that they had no one else to do now that Collins was gone.

In truth, he was keeping himself occupied not solely because of _Collins’_ absence, but because general loneliness was starting to set itself deep into his bones. He had been fairly popular at school, but most of his friends had been drafted or enlisted in the war, and his one-sided conversations with George at the cemetery could only go so far. Even at twenty-three, he was far too young to get along with any of the others at the newspaper, and the pretty young secretary’s flirtatious conversation just made him feel slightly ill. The only people he had to talk to were his parents, and they were still talking to Collins regularly.

Having been sent home from work early because of a slow news day, he was busying himself in the shed, setting a bucket under the leaking roof and beginning to mop the watery mess on the ground, ruminating on calling Collins and forcing him to apologise for the upset he’d caused.

There was a short rap on the door, and his mother stepped into the shed without invitation. “Asher is on the phone.”

It was a message she passed onto him every time Collins called. He turned away from her, continuing to mop the floor as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “Okay.”

“He would really like to speak to you, dear,” she said.

Peter wrung out the dripping mop into the bucket, “Tell him that I’m busy.”

He heard her sigh, and for a moment, he thought she had left, until she placed her hand on his arm. “Peter, love, you know you can’t ignore him forever.”

 _I can bloody well try_ , he thought, but he knew that saying that would upset her, so he ground his teeth against the words and shook his arm out of her grip so that he could continue mopping the puddle.

“He really needs you at the moment,” she tried again. “You know how it feels to need a friend.”

Peter stopped.

Waiting a moment, and realising he wasn’t going to respond or even look at her, she said, “Just think about it, dear. You can call him when you’re ready.”

She left him alone, then, and he watched after her for a moment before following her into the house.

Collins sounded absolutely wrecked as he told Peter all about Farrier’s situation, and the tearful explanation made Peter feel horrendous for ignoring him, for being angry at him for abandoning him and his family. It was obvious now that he had much bigger issues to deal with than Peter’s petty jealousy, and, if Peter knew him at all, he felt like he owed Farrier the courtesy of helping him.

“I just...” Collins breathed a sigh down the phone, right into Peter’s ear. “I don’t know what to do, Pete. This... whatever this is – how he’s living, now... It isn’t living. It’d be more humane to just put him out of his misery; it’s what he would have wanted.”

His voice cracked, and Peter had to take a deep, counted breath to stop himself from bursting into childish tears at the sound of his friend’s upset.

“Before he died, George lost his sight.” He had hardly recounted this memory since that day, but he found that it didn’t upset him as much as he would have expected. “I’m not sure if it was because of the shock or the bump to his head, but if he’d somehow lived – if we’d managed to get home in time to save him – he would have probably lived the rest of his life blind.”

Collins’ breath hitched, “Pete, I’m so sorry.”

“Let me finish,” Peter shushed. “What I’m trying to tell you is that it didn’t stop me from wanting him to live. Even if he’d lived the rest of his life crippled, unable to work or function completely on his own, if he’d only lived to see twenty, I would have chosen his life without question.

“It’s the same for you, Asher. Farrier is still there, and I’m sure he’d prefer to live handicapped with you than wither away alone.”

 

Farrier had come back into his own a little bit more as the month had gone by, and he could now move the fingers of his left hand enough to brush his fingertips against Collins’ elbow or knuckle if he was sat close enough and wanted his attention. Although his vocabulary was still limited to four words, he now had gained some semblance of control over which of the words he could say and seemed to take joy in repeating “Collins” over and over until food or water was brought to his mouth.

One day, Elizabeth intercepted him on the way to Farrier’s room, handing him a large rectangle of clear plastic with six different colour dots, printed on each corner and the top and bottom of the centre, each with a corresponding group of letters, organised by the same colours.

“It’s a spelling board,” Collins repeated Elizabeth’s explanation to Farrier, a few minutes later. “I say these colours, and all you have to do is blink for the group and then the colour of the letter you want, alright?”

“Collins.”

He took that as an answer.

“Right.” He held the board up so that he could see through the cut-out window in the centre, watching Farrier’s face carefully. “Green, yellow, blue, pink, black, red.”

Farrier didn’t blink at any of the colours, and Collins huffed, sitting on the edge of his seat and leaning in slightly closer. “I know you understand me, Farrier. Blink to choose the colour.”

He tried again, no response.

“Farrier,” he warned.

Farrier’s left hand, resting on his knee, shifted slightly, reaching up with his forefinger to catch Collins’ suspender and hook it. Collins stared at it. “You’re not gettin’ a reaction out o’ me until you do this, Jack. I know it’s not great, but it’s the best we’ve got righ’ now.”

Farrier shut his eyes for a moment, tears glistening on his eyelashes, and Collins sat back properly in his chair.

“Please jus’ try it. For me?”

Farrier opened his eyes again and blinked, and Collins took that as a cue to try again.

“Okay.” He took another steadying breath, his head feeling like it was about to drop right off his shoulders. “Green, yellow, blue...”

Farrier blinked.

“Blue?”

He blinked again.

“Right, okay, now, the letter... Green, yellow, blue, pink, black, red...”

Farrier blinked. _L_.

“L,” Collins confirmed.

He went back to the groups. Pink, blue, _O_. Red, pink, _V_. Green, black, _E_.

 _LOVE_.

“You’re a bastard, Farrier,” Collins chuckled, wetly, and he could have been sure that he saw the corner of Farrier’s mouth twitch in a smile.

 

A few days later, he was introduced to a twenty-something year old woman with kind eyes and a smooth Irish accent who introduced herself as Katherine. She, apparently, was a speech therapist assigned to Farrier for weekly sessions to help him regain his use of language. After Collins first introduced her to Farrier, he decided that he didn’t want to be present for their sessions. As much as he cared, he didn’t feel that being around for every aspect of Farrier’s recovery was something that was needed or helpful for either of them.

The speech therapy gave Farrier a whole new lease of life and sprung his recovery forward by what felt like a decade. Every new word or sound he learned to make was coupled with a movement. Following just their first session, Farrier was able to request “Food” or “Water”, and in a few more days, Elizabeth had helped him to relearn how to nod and shake his head. The next session, Farrier could say the basic vowel sounds, and – supported by Collins at his elbow and his wrist – he could shakily bring a spoon to his mouth.

“Coffee,” he said to Collins, a few weeks into the therapy.

Collins was sitting in an armchair in the corner of Farrier’s room, flicking through that morning’s paper, and Farrier was slowly making his way through a book that Katherine had bought for him, with the explanation that reading was the only way for him to fully regain his grasp on language. So far, she had theorised that Farrier did _know_ the language, but it was getting it out of him that was the difficult part, since he’d been so isolated from regular English conversation for so long. She had told Collins to encourage him to use full sentences, or mostly full, as often as possible.

Collins hummed, looked up from the paper, and Farrier’s eyebrows furrowed with concentration as he tried again.

“Want coffee,” he stammered, and then, “I want coffee, please.”

That made Collins smile, which made Farrier smile. “Of course.” He glanced at the clock, they only had five or so minutes until Katherine would arrive for their session. “Are you alright to meet Kath by yourself?”

Farrier nodded, and Collins so desperately wanted to drop a subtle kiss onto his forehead. But he couldn’t, so he just pressed his hand against his shoulder for a lingering moment as he left.

The coffee was from the nurses’ rec room, because the coffee they served to the patients always made Farrier shake his head and purse his lips tight against the straw. Collins was on his way back to Farrier’s room to deliver it, steaming mug in hand, when he found Katherine in the hallway, looking through a file that she’d compiled for Farrier’s therapy.

“Afternoon,” he greeted her as he approached.

She glanced at the mug in his hands, “Is that for me?”

“It’s for Farrier,” he replied, awkwardly, and then added, “Sorry.”

The silence that befell them was stifling. Without the presence of Farrier, they really had nothing to discuss. Until she spoke again, “Maybe you could make it up to me and take me out for one instead?”

“I – uh...” he stammered.

She cringed visibly at his hesitation, “Is that a no?”

It took him a moment to find his words again. It had been a while since he’d been directly asked on a date by a woman, and even longer since he’d actually been on one. “It’s – you are lovely, Katherine, ‘m jus’ not, ‘m not really...”

Katherine shifted her file in her arms, finishing his sentence, “Interested in me?”

“No, it’s not you!” he quickly said. “‘M focussing on Farrier, at the momen’, ‘m – uh – he doesn’t have anyone else, so, I don’t wan’ to...”

Her mouth opened in a whispered, “Ah.” He wasn’t sure what she had realised, but it stopped her from asking him any more awkward questions. “I see. Do you want me to take that to him?”

Collins handed her the mug, and she smiled at him before slipping into the room.

 

Three months later, Collins got to Farrier’s room to find him sat up in bed, filling in a crossword on his lap while Elizabeth was collecting his dish from breakfast.

“Morning Collins,” Farrier’s voice wasn’t quite back to how it had sounded before – it was slightly slow, and he often stumbled over or left out words – but Collins didn’t think he could survive a day without hearing it.

“Are we walking again today?” Collins sat down in the armchair in the corner. Usually, if Farrier was in bed, he liked to sit at the end of it, but not while Elizabeth, or a doctor, was in the room. Friendly was acceptable, but anything more than a handshake and the occasional hug was dangerous.

“If Jack feels up to it.” Elizabeth unfolded the metal walker that Farrier had been using to help him support his own weight again. So far, he had managed a slow shuffle across the metre of space between his bed and the window a few times, and Elizabeth was sure he was ready to travel a little further, to the armchair.

Farrier, as always, jumped at the prospect of a challenge. Although his pained expression and shortness of breath said differently, after every one-metre walk he insisted that he was ready to walk more. “When you give me a longer distance, one metre will seem like nothing,” was what he constantly told them, and although Collins and the nurse didn’t strictly agree, neither of them were willing to try and deter him.

Farrier pushed his own duvet back, and Collins gently took his ankles and pushed him around so that he was sat on the edge of the bed, socked feet limply grazing the floor. Elizabeth got his slippers onto his feet, and then held the walker towards him, ready and waiting.

“Alright, chocks away,” Collins slipped his left arm beneath both of Farrier’s. “Up you get.”

He hoisted upwards at the same time that Farrier attempted to stand, and after a swaying moment – in which Collins resituated himself behind him, one hand under each arm – Farrier grabbed onto the walker, already shaking with the exertion.

“That’s brilliant, Jack,” Elizabeth encouraged, holding the walker steady.

“No –” Farrier huffed, already out of breath. “It’ll be – fuckin’ brilliant – when I can – walk.”

Elizabeth laughed at that, “Take a step for me then, if you can handle it.”

She said that because she knew he would hate it. Being patronised was what Farrier despised the most, but it was also what fuelled him to push himself further. Collins kept a firm, strong grip beneath his arms and moved forward with Farrier as he shuffled himself forward one step, two steps, three steps. The walker lurched, and Collins wrapped his arms around Farrier’s chest in a split second to keep him upright as his knees buckled.

“Woah! Not that fast,” Elizabeth steadied the walker as Collins helped him back to his feet.

“I can do it,” Farrier insisted.

Collins was struggling with holding Farrier’s entire weight, as he stumbled back onto his feet. “I know you’re a stubborn shit, Farrier, but you have to take your time.”

Farrier scoffed, but took the advice, taking one slow step at a time. Five minutes and more core strength than Collins had thought he would ever have to use later, he was sat in the armchair across the room, with a thin sheer of sweat on his forehead and a triumphant grin, despite the wheeze in his chest that the walk had caused.

“So, when do I sign up for the marathon?”

The sarcastic comment didn’t mean much, but it made Collins’ heart skip. Walking that short distance must have felt like a marathon to him, but he’d done it, which meant he was regaining his old fire, he was rediscovering the Farrier that Collins had once known.

 

Farrier’s recovery was a meticulous process that was painful for both him and Collins. Although his speech had been regained fairly quickly, and he was soon taking daily walks through the small hospital garden with only Collins and Elizabeth to lean on for support, full motor function came back slowly and not without incident.

Occasionally, he would forget how to grip or step properly, resulting in multiple broken glasses and more bruises than he’d ever received during the war. He wasn’t kind to himself, either, and would get very easily frustrated when something went wrong. It was up to Collins, in those moments, to clean up the broken glass or help him up from the floor and whisper words of encouragement until he believed in himself again.

In the darker days, the nights when he was alone and able to sob his relief and his heartbreak, Collins feared that Farrier would never be fully back to the strong-willed and sometimes terrifying pilot he once was. But he was getting there, day by day.

At the dusk of 1946, they moved into a house in London, the only place Farrier had been able to call home in six years. The nightmares that they both suffered didn’t disappear, and Farrier walked with a limp and had trouble climbing the stairs, and Collins carried Farrier’s ID disc with him and took shallow baths. But it was as close to perfect as it could have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is short as hell, sorry. 10 points to ur hogwarts house if you caught the reference to the theory of everything.


	7. 1948

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it: the final proper chapter, the last hurrah, the home stretch. we made it this far!

**January 21 st, 1948.**

Peter Dawson arrived at their London home with an armful of pink swaddle and his wife, a beautiful blonde named Sloane. He had moved to Sussex a year and a half ago to be closer to his job at the Evening Standard, and Sloane – who had been a secretary at the newspaper he’d worked for in Dorset – had moved with him. Collins had been extremely worried about Peter the day of the wedding, he had seemed volatile and upset and too trapped in his head to understand the gravity of a marriage. But now, with his wife by his side and his daughter in his arms, Peter had never seemed more content.

They had come around to introduce the baby, who was just coming on two months, to her godfather, although Peter stole the first of the attention from Collins by passing the baby off to Sloane and crushing Collins in a hug almost the moment he had stepped across the threshold.

Farrier was resting in his armchair, which he had fallen in love with at a second-hand furniture shop. Upon seeing Peter and his family, he stood and held his hand out.

“Jack Farrier.”

Although Peter knew full-well from their phone calls that Collins and Farrier were living together, and he’d known that Farrier would be present at this meeting, he still appeared star-struck by the man as he shook his hand. “Peter Dawson, sir.”

Farrier introduced himself to Sloane as Peter took the baby back into his arms, pushing her towards Collins. “Go on, Asher, hold her.”

Collins held both of his hands up, “No, no, I’m alright. I’ve never held a babe before, and I don’t plan to start.”

Rolling his eyes, Peter used the hand not supporting the child to pull Collins’ arms down, into a cradling position.

“It’s easy, there’s no need to worry.” He passed the child carefully over to him. Collins tensed as he felt the full weight of the child against his right arm. “Support her head...”

At Peter’s instruction, he slipped his left hand between the crook of his elbow and the child’s head, holding it carefully. For so many years, he’d never thought he could handle something with so much tender care. Holding this small life in his hands – the child of the boy who he considered as his brother – he was overcome by a wave of emotion that he couldn’t quite place, but that made him want to cry.

The baby stared up at him with big, puzzled blue eyes, tiny hands reaching up to grab at his beard. He found himself absently rocking side to side. “What’s her name?”

“Rebecca Irene.” A mournful look crossed Peter’s face as he stared down at the bundle in Collins’ arms.

Collins ran the pad of his thumb over the baby’s soft cheek, “She would have loved her, Pete.”

Breast cancer took Irene Dawson’s life in May of 1947, six months before her granddaughter was born, after fighting it for the best part of a year. Collins’ last memory of her was at Peter’s wedding, where she had worn an outlandish pink scarf on her head to distract the baldness caused by the experimental treatment that she had been administered. Despite her pain, and the gauntness and jaundice of her skin, she looked radiant as she smiled and laughed the whole day through. The last time he had seen Finley Dawson had been at her funeral, where Peter had expressed to Collins his concern for his father and his broken heart.

They didn’t talk about that now, though. They simply smiled at the memory of Irene, and Collins continued to make increasingly ridiculous faces at the baby while she gurgled and tugged at his beard.

He could hear Farrier and Sloane chatting from the kitchen as they made tea, and Peter was smiling hearing their zealous conversation.

“They seem to be getting along well,” Peter crossed his arms, like he didn’t know what to do with them when he wasn’t holding the baby.

“Farrier can get along with anyone,” Collins scrunched his nose at the baby and then blew on her face to make her gurgle happily again. A small, pudgy hand landed on his nose. “He’s always been like that.”

Peter hummed thoughtfully, and then lowered his voice, “How is everything?”

“ _Everything_?” Collins finally looked up from the child’s face to Peter’s. He thought that he had told Peter enough during their phone calls for him to have a general idea of how his life was going at the moment.

Peter’s expression was serious, “You know what I mean, Ash.”

He did. Collins glanced at the kitchen door, ensuring that he could still hear Sloane and Farrier’s conversation from the next room before he spoke, quietly. “The neighbours think I’m his live-in carer.”

Peter raised his eyebrows, “And they believe you?”

Collins nodded. At first, he had been sure the lie wouldn’t be believed, but it was legitimised for the neighbours by the infrequent occasions where Farrier would be bound to a wheelchair, and Collins was responsible for wheeling him in and out of the house. He didn’t mention these incidents, the horrific days where Farrier would wake up having forgotten how to walk, and the constant fear that, one day, they would have to start from the beginning all over again.

Farrier and Sloane joined them then, four cups of tea carried between the two of them, and they sat on the sofas and laughed the rest of the day away, until it started to grow darker outside and Peter announced that they should be leaving before it got too dark.

Sloane took Rebecca out to the car, and Peter dithered at the door.

“Thanks for this,” Peter watched beside Collins as Farrier helped Sloane secure Rebecca into the backseat of the car. “You’ve really made a good life here, Asher. I’m happy for you.”

He turned, then, and suddenly took Collins into a tight hug, pressing his face into his shoulder. Unsure for a moment what to do, since nobody but Farrier had embraced him like this in months, Collins’ hands briefly touched his arms before wrapping around his shoulders and holding him there, safe and secure.

“I’ve missed you,” Peter mumbled.

Collins spoke into his hair, which was still as unruly and fluffy as ever. “Keep yourself out of trouble.”

Sloane called for Peter, and he unfolded himself from the embrace, sniffing loudly and wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “See you soon?”

“Of course,” Collins patted his shoulder.

He called a cheery goodbye to Sloane, who waved at him from the car, and Farrier stood by the door with him to wave them off down the street. Collins felt his throat squeezing, eyes pricking with tears, and Farrier’s knuckles ghosted at his elbow.

“Come on, Ash. Let’s go back inside.”

 

**March 1951**

Farrier told him that he loved him on one of his good days, which were now more regular than the bad ones. It was a day where he had managed to walk through the park and a trip to the butchers alone, and only needing his cane on the way home. He came downstairs from his bath to find Collins cooking the small amount of meat that he had bought and took a seat at the kitchen table where he could watch him as he cooked and whistled along to some old Bing Crosby song crackling through the wireless.

He dished up two plates of meat and vegetables, one doused in the tabasco sauce that Farrier loved, and he hated. When he put Farrier’s plate down in front of him, still humming under his breath, Farrier tugged him down by the side of his open undershirt – which he’d unbuttoned due to the heat in the kitchen – and kissed him. Although they kissed often, Collins’ face was always graced with abashed surprised afterwards. Just the look on him, his sparkling blue eyes, the mess of ginger hair and the scruffy beard he’d once sworn he’d never grow made him say it.

Collins’ expression shifted from surprise, to shock, to a coy grin coupled with joyful laughter, “I love you, too.”

“I always have,” Farrier continued. “In the war, at Dunkirk, in the camps. It was you who kept me alive, Collins. I don’t know if I would have survived without you.”

Collins didn’t know what to say, so he kissed him again.

 

Two weeks passed, and Farrier was sat in his armchair, watching the only channel on their new television. The set had been purchased in part with Collins’ wage from his factory job, and part with the money that they both still received from the RAF for their service. Afternoons like this were some of his favourites, even though Collins was at work and he was alone in the house, he was content to doze in the afternoon sun before the black and white picture and truly relax.

He was in the dozing stage of his afternoon when the doorbell chimed, waking him from his almost-sleep.

There was a woman waiting outside who was, at most, five and a half feet tall. She was a woman evidently empowered by the war, as she stood confidently in navy slacks and a green button-down shirt, her dark hair quaffed into carefully styled rolls at the front and braided neatly at the back, red lips that she seized between pearl-white teeth. Her green eyes softened upon seeing Farrier open the door.

“Jack,” she breathed. “You’re alive.”

“Joann,” he realised, all too suddenly, the air punched from his lungs.

His sister stepped up into the doorway and threw her arms around his neck. If he weren’t still so plagued by his injuries from the camps, he would have picked her up and spun her around joyfully, but he couldn’t manage much more than an elated laugh and a tight hug. Throughout the years since his rescue, he had been convinced that his twin sister had forgotten all about him, somehow. Like most people he had known, she would have received a letter declaring him _MIA_ and should have assumed the worst.

He recounted a heavily censored and paraphrased version of the last ten years over two cups of tea, and by the time he was done, they had both finished their cups. As he handed her the second drink, he asked the questions that had been burning in his mind for the past decade, “How is Ben? And Dianne, and Thomas?”

“Dianne is coming on fifteen, now – she’s a little brat about it, too. Thomas is almost eighteen, if you’d believe,” she spoke of her children, taking a sip of her tea.

He couldn’t believe that. The last time he’d seen his niece and nephew, they’d hardly been toddlers. Now they were teenagers, and they didn’t know their Uncle Jack at all.

“And Ben?” he asked, of her husband.

Her expression closed. She swallowed another mouthful of tea before placing her cup down on the coffee table.

“Ben lost his life in France in 1940,” she said quietly. “He enlisted as a foot-soldier, he died two weeks after he shipped out.”

Farrier placed his hand on her knee, “I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head, dabbing beneath her eyes with the pad of her forefinger, “It’s quite alright. The children have fond memories of him, and anything they don’t remember I’m sure to teach them.”

“And what of their old Uncle Jack?” he asked, a teasing lilt to his voice to hide his fear for the answer.

“They think he’s a hero, just like their dad,” she said. “Thomas doesn’t stop talking about your planes. I swear sometimes he wishes there were another war, so that he could fly a Spitfire like you.”

A warm feeling spread through Farrier’s chest, “I’ll have to teach him.”

The door opened, then, and Collins’ cheerful voice floated through the house, “I’m home!”

He walked through into the living room and stopped in his tracks when he saw Farrier and Joann. Something in Joann’s expression changed when she saw him, but Farrier couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

“My sister, Joann.” he explained. “Joann, this is Asher Collins, my pal from Fortis.”

“Hello,” she stood and held her hand out to him.

He removed his hat and kissed her knuckles, in the way he did that usually caused ladies to swoon, but she was unmoved, simply wiping her hand on her slacks.

He clutched his hat to his chest, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Farrier. If I’d known you were visiting, I would have cleaned the place.”

It was supposed to be a joke. Joann didn’t laugh. “It’s Mrs Anderton, thank you.”

“Sorry, Mrs Anderton.” He ducked his head slightly, as if she were royalty. “Would you like a cup of tea? I think we have a few digestive biscuits leftover in the cupboard...”

“I’m alright, thank you.” Her expression was stoic and unchanging as she picked up her bag from the floor. “I was actually hoping to stay here for the night; my children are staying with my husband’s parents, and I should like to have the evening to catch up with my brother.”

Collins felt oddly observed, in the centre of the room in front of both of the Farrier siblings. “Of course. I’ll put you up in my room, if you’d like.”

Farrier was about to protest, but Joann smiled. “That would be lovely, show me where it is?”

Collins shot a despaired look in Farrier’s direction before shedding his coat and shoes and leading her upstairs to his bedroom.

She held her bag in front of her with both hands, like a shield, as she strolled past him into the bedroom. He immediately felt like she was analysing it, like some unwanted, hyper-critical home inspector. The room was lived in enough, what with Farrier’s nightmares often driving him into it anyway, but he couldn’t help the feeling that she could see through all of that, that she was reading the very inside of his mind from the walls.

“The bathroom is the first door on the right.” He gestured behind him to the hall. “I’ll leave you to get settled.”

“Thank you.” She placed her bag down, and sat daintily on the bed, calling out to him before he could leave. “Can I ask you a question?”

His heart drummed against his ribcage like a startled hummingbird. “Yes?”

“Why didn’t you try to find me?”

It was a loaded question, but the way she phrased it made it sound casual, and her body language read the same – legs crossed at the ankles, arms sitting neatly in her lap, expression neutral and open.

“I didn’t know how,” he replied, truthfully, because he hadn’t.

When he’d found Farrier in that hospital, he had no knowledge of Joann’s married surname or her address, besides that she lived in Bath. He hadn’t been in a position to even think about how many Joanns lived in bath, or how much time it would have taken for him to rake through them all and find the right one with two children and a brother in the RAF.

She pursed her lips, “But you didn’t try.”

Although phrased unfairly, it was true, after all. He nodded, once. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll see you for dinner,” she replied. “Close the door on your way out.”

The evening was dreadfully awkward, and Collins found himself breathing an unintentional sigh of relief when she finally retired to bed after dinner. For a woman who’d just found that her brother was alive after ten years of wondering, she seemed almost painfully emotionless.

“She’s not usually like this,” Farrier explained, unprompted. Collins was glad he had also noticed her hostility. “Or, at least, she wasn’t.”

Collins felt a shot of something like guilt. “I understand. Finding out that you’re here must have been difficult – she probably thinks that I’ve been keeping you from her.”

“Have you?”

It was a genuine question, one of those that Farrier had to ask throughout the years of his recovery. For a time, he’d relied on Collins for everything, which included rediscovering things about the world in the time he had missed. Collins could have been keeping anything from him, and Farrier, at his most vulnerable, would have been none the wiser. The accusation stung, nonetheless.

“Of course not, Jack.” Checking that the living room was empty and that Joann was, indeed, in bed, he rounded the kitchen table and softly cupped Farrier’s jaw. He pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “I would never keep you from seeing her, you know that. I wouldn’t keep you from doing anything. You could walk out of here tomorrow, and I would do nothing to stop you if that was what you thought was right.”

Farrier looked up at him, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know,” Collins kissed him. “But if you did, I would understand. I would be heartbroken, but I would respect your decision.”

“You’re such a romantic, Ash,” Farrier chuckled, leaning up to kiss him again. He muttered against his lips, “I love you.”

Collins kissed his lips, then the tip of his nose, then the bridge of his nose, his forehead, his hairline, and the very crown of his head. “I love you, too. Come Hell or high water, I always will.”

“Or Joann Farrier-Alderton?” Farrier added.

Collins chuckled against his thick hair, “Yes. Come Hell, high water, or Joann Farrier-Alderton, I will always love you.”

Collins got some blankets and pillows down from the airing cupboard and spent the night on the sofa. As much as he would have liked to sneak into Farrier’s bed and sleep in the warmth of his arms, he saw it out in the living room, gritting his teeth against the stiffness that resided in his neck and back the next morning.

Shortly after waking, he began to make himself a cup of coffee and cleared away his makeshift bed as it was brewing. Farrier came into the kitchen as he was on his third sip.

“How’d you sleep?” Farrier was still as groggy in the mornings as he always had been.

“Fine,” Collins shrugged, which was a mistake, because the crack of his shoulders immediately gave away his discomfort.

Farrier’s eyebrows knitted together in concern, and he was almost immediately rounding the table, massaging the stiffness out of Collins’ shoulders.

Collins tried to wriggle out of his grasp, “You don’t have to...” And then, Farrier twisted his shoulder in just the right way, causing a popping noise that was followed by a relief that flooded through his whole body. “Okay, no, do that again.”

Farrier had moved onto his other shoulder when there was a loud knock at the door, and Collins groaned at the interruption. The clock on the wall told him that it was barely seven, which was far too early for the postman to be on their side of town yet.

“I’ll get it,” Collins placed down his mug and briefly brushed hands with Farrier before heading to the front door. Upstairs, a door opened, and the floorboards creaked.

Two police officers in uniform were stood outside of the door. For a moment, Collins thought somebody was having a joke with him, until he looked past them and saw their car parked on the side of the pavement. Farrier had emerged from the kitchen to watch them from near the stairs.

“Flight Lieutenant Asher Collins?” One of the officers asked. He was tall and leaner than the other, who was shorter and stout.

Hardly anybody had called him Lieutenant in years. He smiled pleasantly, leaned up against the doorframe. “That’s me. What do you need, Officers?”

He took in both of their grave expressions before the taller one spoke again, “You’re under arrest.”

The shorter one had already taken a pair of handcuffs from his belt and seized Collins by the wrist. He didn’t use much force, but Collins turned willingly, allowing him to fasten the handcuffs on both of his wrists behind his back. He could easily have overpowered the man if he wanted to, but he didn’t need to make this situation any worse. Not even the anxiety coursing through him could have made him lash out against a police officer.

“Under arrest?” he gritted out as his wrist was twisted unnecessarily.

“Arrest?” Farrier charged forward, “He has never done a bad thing in his life!”

The taller officer ignored him, “Asher Collins, you are under arrest on suspicion of sodomy, gross indecency and loitering with intent...”

“Sodomy? _Gross indecency_?” Farrier yelled, outraged, over the officer.

Collins squeezed his eyes shut as he was wrestled out of the front door with excessive force, stumbling down from the front step and immediately being roughly pushed in the direction of the officers’ car. Farrier followed them out onto the street.

“You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court.”

Farrier’s throat tightened around his words as he shouted himself hoarse, heart drumming painfully hard against his chest and causing him to gasp for air. He felt like he was drowning, and his churning stomach made him feel like he wanted to heave. “What do you mean _court_?”

They pushed Collins into the backseat of the car, not at all careful with it, so he knocked his head on the way down. “Collins, tell them, Ash, please, tell them you’re innocent!” He begged, as the door was slammed between them.

A few of the neighbours had come out into the street, poking their heads out of their front doors and standing on their stoops to watch. Farrier didn’t care. “Ash, please!” he sobbed, ugly, heaving sobs that left his head aching and his vision blurring. Collins looked up at him through the window, tears glistening on the apples of his cheeks.

“Please...” Farrier begged, quietly, once more. Collins shook his head once, resigned, and the car pealed off from the curb.

Feeling like he was floating in the ocean untethered, Farrier cried and wheezed as he watched the car until it was completely out of sight. Hoarse from shouting, his whole body aching in a way it hadn’t done in years, he ignored the glances and whispers of the neighbours as he turned away from the road and trudged back into the house. It was eerily silent, as he shut the front door on the world.

Joann was stood on the stairs, hair in rollers, chewing on her right thumbnail as he walked back through the house.

“Jack,” she exasperated, rushing down the stairs to take him into her arms.

He wanted to push her away, but he couldn’t find the strength. Being in her arms was comforting in a way that he couldn’t have explained if he tried, and he found himself crying without realising it was happening, sobbing openly against her cotton robe. She shushed him comfortingly, guiding him towards the sofa so that they could both sit, keeping herself wrapped around him.

“Calm down, darling, it’s alright...” She smoothed a hand through his hair, waiting for his shoulders to stop shaking, the sobs to quieten to minute sniffles. “Maybe this was for the best.”

In his drained state, it took him a moment to register what she had said.

He sat up, slowly, pushing her arms off him, despite her struggle to keep him in her embrace.

“What did you say?” he whispered, hoping that he had misheard.

She placed her hands on his knee, speaking slowly and softly. “I said, maybe this was for the best.”

He pushed himself to his feet – aggravated that he couldn’t move very fast at all due to his lingering injuries – and scrubbed his nose with the back of his hand, eyes wild and upset. “What the fuck does that mean? How could this be _for the best_? He’s my best friend, Joann!”

“He is a sodomite,” Joann’s voice was level. “You cannot afford to be associating with someone like that, not with what you have been through.”

“And how would you know?” he demanded. “Huh? How the _fuck_ would you know what he is? You have known him for, what, a day? I’ve known him for twelve years!”

She stared at her lap, taking the comments in her stride, and then met his eyes with a gaze as steady and even as her tone, “And what does that say about you?”

Everything around him suddenly came to a screeching halt. “What...?”

She collected herself for a moment, and spoke hushed, almost in a whisper, as if the sound of her own voice hurt her ears. “Do you really think I don’t know, Jack? Why you never had a girlfriend? Why you would sneak away at night when we were teenagers, where you would go? Why you joined the RAF when we turned twenty-five, and I was married, and you weren’t?”

“What are you saying, Joann?” Farrier demanded, although he wasn’t shouting anymore. He couldn’t shout anymore.

She crossed the no man’s land between them and placed a hand on his wet cheek, her own eyes now shimmering with unshed tears. “Do you remember when Mum died?” The memory caused a pang in his chest that only served to add to the pain existing there. “Do you remember what we promised her? That we’d always protect each other, no matter what?”

He knew what she was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear it. He tried to turn his face away from her, but she put her other hand on his cheek to keep him there, looking straight at her. “I did this to protect you, Jack, to keep my promise. I did this to keep you safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry


	8. epilogue - 2020

**June 2020**

_A letter from a man jailed for sodomy (identified simply as ‘Collins’), to his lover, ‘Farrier’. Uncovered and revised by Professor Rebecca Irene Marlowe._

_Circa. 1955._

June 4th, 1955

My dear Farrier,

I am writing to you from a prison cell, with no knowledge of where you are, or whether this letter will reach you. I’ve given it to Peter Dawson, with the hope that he can find you and deliver it to you personally. (I am sure that he will; I trust him with my life.) I’m not sure what happened to you after my arrest, but I was informed that our small house was rented on soon after my trial. So quickly was it handed over, I find myself wondering whether old Suzie James had anything to do with it.

Every night, I dream of water. A vast, endless void of blue that I sink deeper and deeper into, choking against the flotation device designed to save me, which tries to kill me, instead. Some nights you find me, you pull me from the ocean and breathe the water out of my lungs. Others, I fall and fall until I wake, spluttering and choking for air. I miss those nights where you would wake me from these dreams, kind and solid, my very own survival device to keep me from slipping under and drowning in the weight of the things that I’ve seen.

You, my love, keep me afloat. Even now, when I cannot see you, or even know where you are. 

Fifteen years ago, I first lost you, and I don’t suppose you every truly came back to me. Those few years, those blissful years between the war and my arrest were beautiful and poignant, but I suppose they were insignificant. Now that we find ourselves, somehow, back in the same situation we were in ten years ago, I wonder whether we were ever meant to reunite at all, or whether we were supposed to say our final goodbye that day in 1940, and God mistakenly brought us back together. 

However, I have never truly said goodbye to you. I lost my heart on Dunkirk beach, and I took a piece of you in return. So, with this letter, I give that piece back to you. In exchange, I ask you for my heart. If I live to see the end of my sentence, I hope that you will find me and return it to me.

I will always love you, Farrier.

Come Hell or high water, come war, peace, a Luftwaffe, a police officer, or a sister, I will always love you.

Your Collins.

_This letter was discovered along with a single, worn Bakelite disc, believed to be an RAF pilot’s identity tag, potentially dating from the Second World War._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew! and it's done! this has been almost a year and a half in the making, and i've gotta admit that i cried a lot when writing this letter, not because i think my writing is any good at all, but because this feels like my final goodbye to these two :'). just wanna quickly thank my dunkirk fandom pal charlotte for seeing this fic through from it's conception to it's final upload, and apologise to her for the ending which i originally promised her i wouldn't make angsty.  
> i also really hope you all caught the lil easter egg in this chapter, because i was weirdly proud of myself for it.
> 
> my tumblr: amomentsilence.tumblr.com
> 
> thanks for reading!! 
> 
> ((i'm once again very sorry for the shit writing in certain parts of this. as i said, it was partly written in 2017 :) ))


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